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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J 



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dr/middleton's 

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LETTER FBOM KOME, 



SHOWING AN EXACT CONFORMITY BETWEEN 

POPERY AND PAGANISM ; 

OR, 

THE RELIGION OF THE PRESENT ROMANS DERIVED 
FROM THAT OF THEIR HEATHEN ANCESTORS, 



THE AUTHOR'S DEFENCE 

AGAINST A ROMAN CATHOLIC OPPONEN' 



WITH 

AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY AND NOTES, 
BY JOHN BOWLING, D. D. 

Author of "History of Romanism," &c. , &c 




NEW-YORK\0>^ 

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN PROTESTANT 3 

150 NASSAU STREET. 



c x. 



•V s 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by 

Edward Vernon, 

in behalf of the American Protestant Society, in the Clerk's 
Office for the Southern District of New- York. 






ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



Page 
Introductory Essay by the Editor, . . . . v 

Dr. Middleton's Preface, xxxi 

LETTER FROM ROME. 

Chap. I. — First Impressions of Rome, and Motives of 

the Journey, ........ 33 

Chap. II. — Incense, Holy Water, and Lighted Candles, . 43 

Chap. III.— Votive Gifts, or Offerings, ... 52 

Chap. IV. — Worship of Images, 59 

Chap. V.— Road Gods and Saints, .... 76 

Chap. VI.— Religious Processions, .... 82 

Chap. VII.— False Miracles, 87 

Chap. VIII. — Church Refuge— Orders of Priests and 

Friars, 102 

Chap. IX. — Conclusion, 107 

DEFENCE OF THE LETTER FROM ROME. 

§ 1. Preliminary Remarks, 113 

§ 2. Origin of Popish Rites, 115 



IV ANALYTICAL INDEX. 

Pa*e 

§3. Use of Incense, 117 

§ 4. Holy Water, 120 

§ 5. Lighted Candles, 123 

§ 6. Votive Offerings, 125 

§ 7. Image Worship, . 126 

§ 8. The Miraculous Picture of St. Mary, . . .135 

§ 9. Images not Defensible, 140 

§ 10, Fictitious Saints, 144 

§ 11. St. Thomas a Becket, 150 

§ 12. Transubstantiation, 152 

§ 13. Spurious Miracles, 155 

§ 14. Conclusion, 170 

APPENDIX. 

A. — St. Januarius and the French General, . . 177 

B. — Resemblance between Modern Paganism and Po- 
pery. By Rev. Eugenio Kincaid, .... 179 

C. — Temporizing Policy of the Jesuit Missionaries 

in China, 1S4 

D.— Sprinkling of Horses at Rome, . . 192 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, 



In the remarkable conversation held by HIM. 
who spake as "never man spake," with the woman 
of Samaria, our blessed Lord uttered the following 
significant and memorable prediction : " Woman, 
believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither 
in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the 
Father. — But the hour cometh, and now is, when 
the true worshippers shall worship the Father in 
spmrr and in truth." — John 4: 21, 23. As 
though he had said : < Vain are now the disputes 
between Samaritans and Jews, as to the contending 
claims of the temples of Gerizim or of Jerusalem ; 
the hour is speedily approaching when the peculiar 
worship of Jehovah shall no longer be confined to 
any special locality. The dispensation of Moses 
is soon to pass away, with its ceremonial observ- 
ances, its ritual sacrifices, and its temple worship. 
The shadow is to be superseded by the substance ; 

the type, by that which it was designed to repre- 
1* 



VI INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

sent. — Hitherto, Samaritans and Jews have alike 
approached unto the Father amid the pomp of ex- 
ternal worship, with rites, ceremonies, and sacri- 
fices : in future, the true worshippers, no longer 
relying on outward ceremonies for acceptance, 
shall worship Him in spirit. Hitherto he has been 
approached, through the medium of types and 
shadows ; soon his servants shall worship him in 
truth ; — in the true way of direct approach to God, 
through Him who is the way, the truth, and the 
life.' 

In accordance with this prediction, we find that 
the worship of the early Christians was pre-emi- 
nently a spiritual worship. Whether we examine 
the inspired record of the Acts of the Apostles with 
their spiritual and instructive epistles, or the 
authentic ecclesiastical history of the first century 
of its existence, we find that Primitive Christianity 
was emphatically a religion of spirit, in distinction 
from a religion of form. Whether the early dis- 
ciples assembled for worship in private dwellings, 
in open fields, in desert places, or in " dens and 
caves of the earth," — as they were then compelled 
by persecution to do, — they met, not to renew the 
obsolete rites and sacrifices of Judaism, or to 
imitate the gorgeous and profane ceremonies of 
Paganism, but to " worship HIM who is a Spirit 
in spirit and in truth." 

When the great Apostle of the Gentiles preached 
the gospel and planted Christian churches in Rome, 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. Vll 

in Corinth, or in Ephesus, nothing could exhibit 
a more complete and striking contrast than that 
between the pure and spiritual worship which he 
established, and the pompous heathen ceremonies, 
in the same cities, of the priests of Jupiter, Venus, 
or Diana. They were as widely different as light 
from darkness ; as utterly opposed as Christ and 
Belial ; as far asunder as heaven and hell. 

To deepen our impression of this contrast, let us, 
in imagination, forgetful of the lapse of eighteen 
centuries, transport ourselves back to the days of 
the Caesars, and, in the city of Rome, enter yon 
Heathen temple, which lifts its stately dome to the 
clouds, high above all the surrounding edifices. 
Dedicated to all the gods, and therefore called the 
Pantheon, it stands pre-eminent among the four hun- 
dred Pagan temples of the proud capital of the 
ancient world. As we enter, the first objects which 
meet our eye are the statues of Jupiter, Neptune, 
Pluto and Apollo ; of Juno, Diana, Minerva and 
Venus; and a multitude of other images of heathen 
deities, demigods and heroes. — It is the hour of 
worship, on some grand national occasion. The 
Fontifex Maocimus, or chief priest, dressed in his 
flowing robe of ceremony, called the toga pratcxta, 
with the galerus, or cap made of the skin of a sac- 
rificed victim, on his head, marches in stately pro- 
cession over the marble pavement, attended by the 
college of pontifices, the augurs and haruspices, in 
their priestly vestments ; some of them with lighted 



Vlll INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

wax candles in their hands, others with their asper- 
gilla, or sprinkling-brushes, scattering holy water as 
they go ; while the air is filled with the odour of the 
incense arising from the smoking censers borne by 
the white-robed youths attendant upon the priests, 
who proceed, amid the admiring gaze of the multi- 
tude, to extend their victims upon the altars, and 
offer them in sacrifice to the consecrated images 
of Jupiter, Juno or Minerva. 

By the side of this heathen temple, and almost un- 
der the shadow of its walls, is a humble dwelling. 
As we enter, we behold a group of attentive and in- 
terested Christian worshippers. They are hanging 
upon the lips of one whose countenance betokens 
his descent, as a son of Abraham, while he preaches 
to them Jesus and the resurrection ; and then to- 
gether they unite in solemn prayer and praise to 
Father, Son, and Spirit. And who is this faithful 
herald of the Cross who thus dares, under the very 
shadow of the idol temples of Rome, to preach the 
gospel of the " crucified One," and to declare, " I 
am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the 
power of God unto salvation to every one that 
believeth "? It is the great Apostle to the Gentiles, 
who " for two whole years dwelt in his own hired 
house (in the city of Rome), preaching the kingdom 
of God, and teaching those things which concern 
the Lord Jesus Christ."— Acts 28 : 30, 81. 

The former is a picture of Pagan, the latter of 
primitive Christian worship. Is it possible to con- 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. IX 

ceive a more complete contrast, a more entire 
contrariety, than that between the one of these 
scenes and the other? The former, all pomp and 
pageantry and form and show, a company of Pagan 
worshippers, offering their idolatrous sacrifices to 
gods of marble or of brass ; — the latter, all sim- 
plicity, reverence, and spirituality ; a company 
of true worshippers, worshipping the Father in 
spirit and in truth. 

An equally vivid contrast might be drawn be- 
tween the simple and spiritual worship of the prim- 
itive disciples in Antioch, where they were first 
honored with the name of Christians, and the volup- 
tuous Pagan rites of the neighboring groves of 
Daphne ; or between that of the disciples of Corinth, 
who were " washed " and " sanctified " and "justi- 
fied," and the licentious yet superstitious devotees 
of the famed temple of Venus in that polluted city ; 
or that of the " faithful " Ephesians " accepted 
in the beloved," and those worshippers of a Pagan 
goddess, who filled the air with their frantic shouts, 
" Great is Diana of the Ephesians." 

In contemplating these entirely opposite charac- 
ters and modes of worship, we are irresistibly led 
to the conclusion that primitive Christianity and 
Paganism had no element in common, that fire and 
water might as readily have been brought to amal- 
gamate with each other, and the antipodes have 
been as easily united ; and the supposition that 
such a resemblance should at any time exist be- 



X INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

tween these two systems of worship, that the one 
might be mistaken for the other, appears like the 
very acme of absurdity and extravagance. 

Yet it is a fact too well established to admit of 
doubt or denial, that for twelve centuries* or up- 
wards, a system of religious worship has existed 
supported by a vast and powerful hierarchy, having 
its head-quarters in the city of Rome, called by the 
name of Christianity, but possessing the closest 
possible resemblance to Paganism. In the rank 
and orders of its priesthood, from the Pontifex Maxi- 
mus or Pope, downward, through every gradation, 
in its pompous and imposing ceremonies of worship, 
as well as in the images, whom it reverences or 
adores — almost identically the same. This resem- 
blance is so striking, as well as so extensive, as to 
force upon us the conviction that the elder is the 
parent of the younger ; and that not the spiritual 
religion of the despised Nazarene, that gospel which 
Paul preached, but Romish Paganism, such as it 
was in the days of Cicero, or of Virgil, is the source 
from which is derived, and the model upon which is 
framed the whole fabric of Romish Papal worship. 

The scholar, familiar as he is with the classic 

* The writer considers the epoch of the birth of Popery, 
properly speaking, to be A. D. 606, when the supremacy of the 
Bishop of Rome was finally established, by the decree of the 
tyrant and murderer Phocas, conferring upon that dignitary 
the title of Universal Bishop. For a particular account of this 
event, and of the principal actors therein, see Dowling's His- 
tory of Romanism, Book I., chapters 5, 6,— pp. 50-64. 




INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XI 

descriptions of ancient mythology, when like the 
learned author of the " Letter from Rome " he be- 
comes an eye-witness to the ceremonies of Papal 
worship, cannot avoid recognizing their close re- 
semblance, if not their absolute identity. The 
temples of Jupiter, Diana, Venus, or Apollo ; their 
altars smoking with incense ; their boys in sacred 
habits, holding the incense box, and attending upon 
the priests ; their holy water at the entrance of the 
temples, with their asjpergilla or sprinkling brushes ; 
their thuribula, or vessels of incense ; their ever- 
burning lamps before the statues of their deities ; 
are irresistibly brought before his mind, whenever 
he visits a Roman Catholic place of worship, and 
witnesses precisely the same things. 

If a Roman scholar of the age of the Caesars, 
who, previous to his death, had formed some ac- 
quaintance with the religion of the despised Naza- 
rene, had in the seventh or eighth century arisen 
from his grave in the Campus Martius, and wan- 
dered into the spacious church of Constantine at 
Rome, which then stood on the spot now occupied 
by Saint Peter's ; if he had there witnessed these 
institutions of Paganism, which were then, and ever 
since have been, incorporated with the worship of 
Rome, would he not have come to the conclusion 
that he had found his way into some temple dedi- 
cated to Diana, Venus, or Apollo, rather than into 
a Christian place of worship, where the successors 
of Peter the fisherman, or Paul the tent-maker, had 



Xll INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

met for the worship of Jesus of Nazareth? It is 
impossible to conceive of a greater contrast than 
that which is presented between the plain and sim- 
ple rites of primitive apostolic Christian worship in 
the first century, and the pompous and imposing 
spectacle of Papal worship, in the seventh, per- 
formed in some stately cathedral, adorned with its 
altars, pictures, images, and burning wax-lights ; 
with all the array of holy water, smoking incense, 
tinkling bells, and priests and boys arrayed in 
gaudy-colored vestments, as they were seen in the 
time of Boniface, the first of the Popes, and as they 
are still seen, with but little change, after the lapse 
of a dozen centuries. 

With these incontestable facts before us, it be- 
comes an interesting subject of inquiry — How was 
this transformation effected ? Was • this change, 
from the simplicity and spirituality of primitive 
Christian worship, to the pomp and ceremony of 
Paganism, sudden, or gradual ? And after the 
transformation was complete, was the church of 
Rome to be regarded as a true church of Christ, or 
as a fulfillment of the predicted apostacy from the 
faith ?* 

To give a full answer to these inquiries, to state 
the proofs at length, that the church of Rome is not 
a church of Christ, but Antichrist, and to trace the 
gradual steps by which the ceremonies of Pagan 

* See 2 Thess. ii. 1-10 ; 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2, 3. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. Xlll 

worship were introduced into its ritual — would ex- 
tend the present remarks far beyond the appropriate 
limits of an introductory essay. We can only, 
therefore, briefly refer to the probable period of the 
commencement of this corruption of Christian wor- 
ship, and cite the concurring testimonies of two 
or three respectable authorities as to the reality of 
the corruption, and the causes that gave it birth. 

The practice of accommodating the forms of Chris- 
tian worship to the prejudices of heathen nations, 
was introduced in various places long before the 
establishment of the papal supremacy in 606 ; 
though, of course, as there was, previous to that 
date, no acknowledged earthly sovereign and head 
of the church, the observance of these heathen rites 
was not regarded as obligatory upon all, till enjoined 
by the newly established papal authority, in the 
seventh century. 

It is not unlikely that this policy, in its incipient 
stage, commenced by a mistaken, but well-intended 
desire of some good men, like the Apostle Paul, to 
" become all things to all men," that they might 
11 by all means save some." Yet this apology can 
by no means be admitted as an excuse for the almost 
entire subversion of Christianity in the Romish 
communion by the adoption of these heathen rites, 
ceremonies, and superstitions. 

The ancient heathen nations had always been 

accustomed to a variety of imposing ceremonies in 

their religious services, hence they looked with con- 
2 



XIV INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

tempt upon the simplicity of Christian worship, des- 
titute as it was of these pompous and magnificent 
rites, and it was a step pregnant with disaster to the 
cause of genuine Christianity, when, as early as 
the third century, some advocated the necessity of 
admitting a portion of the ancient ceremonies to 
which the people had been accustomed, for the pur- 
pose of rendering Christian worship more striking 
and captivating to the outward senses. As a proof 
that Christianity began thus early to be corrupted, 
it is related in the life of Gregory, bishop of New 
Cesarea, surnamed Thaumaturgus, or Wonder- 
worker, that " when he perceived that the ignorant 
multitude persisted in their idolatry, on account of 
the pleasures and sensual gratifications which they 
enjoyed at the pagan festivals, he granted them a 
permission to indulge themselves in the like plea- 
sures, in celebrating the memory of the holy mar- 
tyrs, hoping, that, in process of time, they would 
return, of their own accord, to a more virtuous and 
regular course of life." 

" This addition of external rites," says Mosheim, 
" was also designed to remove the opprobrious ca- 
lumnies which the Jewish and Pagan priests cast 
upon the Christians, on account of the simplicity of 
their worship, esteeming them little better than 
atheists, because they had no temples, altars, victims, 
priests, nor any thing of that external pomp in 
which the vulgar are so prone to place the essence 
of religion. The rulers of the church adopted, 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XV 

therefore, certain external ceremonies, that thus 
they might captivate the senses of the vulgar, and 
be able to refute the reproaches of their adversaries, 
thus obscuring the native lustre of the gospel, in 
order to extend its influence, and making it lose, 
in point of real excellence, what it gained in point 
of popular esteem."* 

Subsequent to the conversion of Constantine in 
the fourth century, when Christianity was taken 
under the protection of the state, this sinful confor- 
mity to the practices of Paganism increased to such 
a degree, that the beauty and simplicity of Christian 
worship were almost entirely obscured, and by the 
time these corruptions were ripe for the establish- 
ment of the Popedom, Christianity — the Christianity 
of the state — to judge from the institutions of its 
public worship — seemed but little else than a system 
of Christianized Paganism. 

In his account of the fourth century, Mosheim 
remarks, that " the rites and institutions by which 
the Greeks, Romans, and other nations, had for- 
merly testified their religious veneration for ficti- 
tious deities were now adopted, with some slight 
alterations, by Christian bishops, and employed in 
the service of the true God. These fervent heralds 
of the gospel, whose zeal outran their candor and 
ingenuity, imagined that the nations would receive 
Christianity with more facility, when they saw the 

♦Mosheim, Cent. II., Part 2, Chap. 4. 



XVI INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

rites and ceremonies to which they were accustomed, 
adopted in the church, and the same worship paid 
to Christ and his martyrs, which they had formerly 
offered to their idol deities. Hence it happened, 
that in these times, the religion of the Greeks and 
Romans differed very little, in its external appear- 
ance, from that of the Christians. They had both 
a most pompous and splendid ritual. Gorgeous 
robes, mitres, tiaras, wax tapers, crosiers, proces- 
sions, lustrations, images, gold and silver vases, 
and many such circumstances of pageantry, were 
equally to be seen in the heathen temples and the 
Christian churches." * 

A distinguished member of the establishment in 
Great Britain, Dean Waddington, confirms this 
testimony. " The copious transfusion of heathen 
ceremonies into Christian worship, which had taken 
place before the end of the fourth century," says 
Mr. W., " had, to a certain extent, paganized (if we 
may so express it) the outward form and aspect of 
religion, and these ceremonies became more general 
and more numerous, and, so far as the calamities 
of the times would permit, more splendid in the age 
which followed. To console the convert for the 
loss of his favorite festival, others of a different 
name, but similar description, were introduced ; 
and the simple and serious occupation of spiritual 
devotion was beginning to degenerate into a worship 

* Mosheim, Cent. IV., Part 2, Chap. 4. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XV11 

of parade and demonstration, for a mere scene of 
riotous festivity.' 7 * 

The same testimony is given by the celebrated 
Archibald Bower, the historian of the popes, and a 
remarkable instance of this time-serving policy 
of conciliating heathen nations by adopting their 
pagan ceremonies, is related by him in his ac- 
count of the attempts of Gregory the Great to 
introduce the religion of Rome among our ances- 
tors in Great Britain. It was in the year 596 that 
Austin the monk, a missionary from Gregory, had 
landed upon the coast of Kent. The account which 
the learned historian gives of Gregory's instructions 
to the missionary monk relative to the policy he 
should observe towards the islanders, in his attempts 
to convert them to Christianity, is as follows. " Not 
satisfied," says Bower, " with directing Austin not 
to destroy, but to reserve for the worship of God, 
the profane places where the pagan Saxons had 
worshipped idols, Gregory would have him treat 
the more profane usages, rites, and ceremonies of 
the pagans in the same manner, that is, not to abol- 
ish, but to sanctify them, by changing the end for 
which they were instituted, and introduce them, 
thus sanctified, into the Christian worship. This 
he specifics in a particular ceremony. ' Whereas 
it is a custom,' says he, ' among the Saxons, to slay 
abundance of oxen, and sacrifice them to the devil, 

* Waddington's Hist. Oh., p. 118. 
2* 



XV111 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

you must not abolish that custom, but appoint a new 
festival to be kept, either on the day of the conse- 
cration of the churches, or of the birth-day of the 
saints whose relics are deposited there, and on these 
days the Saxons may be allowed to make arbors 
round the temples changed into churches, to kill 
their oxen, and to feast, as they did while they were 
still pagans, only they shall offer their thanks 
and praises, not to the devil, but to God.' This 
advice, absolutely irreconcilable with the purity of 
the gospel-worship, the pope founds on a pretended 
impossibility of weaning men at once from rites and 
ceremonies to which they have been long accustom- 
ed, and on the hopes of bringing the converts, in 
due time, by such an indulgence, to a better sense 
of their duty to God. Thus was the religion of the 
Saxons, our ancestors, so disfigured and corrupted 
with all the superstitions of Paganism, at its first 
being planted among them, that it scarce deserved 
the name of Christianity, but was rather a mixture 
of Christianity and Paganism, or Christianity and 
Paganism moulded, as it were, into a third reli- 
gion.' 5 * 

When pope Boniface, in the year 606, was in- 
vested, by the emperor Phocas, with supreme au- 
thority over all the churches of the empire, he not 
only adopted all the pagan ceremonies that had pre- 
viously, in various places, been incorporated into 

* Bower's Lives of the Popes. Gregory I. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XIX 

Christian worship, but speedily issued his sovereign 
decrees, enjoining uniformity of worship, and thus 
rendered these heathen rites binding upon all who 
were desirous of continuing in fellowship with the 
Romish church, or, as it was now called, the Holy 
Catholic church. Thus incorporated, they became 
a constituent element of the anti-Christian Apostasy, 
and have so continued from that time till the pres- 
ent. 

The process of change from the simplicity and 
spirituality of primitive Christian worship to the 
pomp, and form, and show of the paganized Chris- 
tianity of Rome was gradual, and commenced by slow 
and almost imperceptible steps ; and it is a fact from 
which the Protestant churches of the present day 
should learn a most important lesson, that the very 
earliest innovation, adopted from motives of worldly 
policy — the very first adoption of heathen rites, in 
order to remove the offence of the Cross, or to con- 
ciliate those who hated the religion of " the cruci- 
fied one, 55 because it was a spiritual religion — was 
the entering wedge which made way for that mass 
of Pagan rites and ceremonies, which were finally 
embodied in the worship of the apostate church of 
Rome. 

Not that we would imply, that, when the ear- 
liest innovations from the simplicity of Christian 
worship were adopted, the actors therein understood 
the danger connected with these first steps in er- 
ror ; or that they anticipated or even imagined that 



XX INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

they would ever grow into such a vast and hideous 
system of superstition as is that of the great papal 
Apostasy. The germs of many of the corruptions 
of Popery may be dated from a very early age, and 
were it not that the originators of those corruptions 
were entirely unsuspicious of the bitterness of those 
apples of Sodom, which should eventually spring 
from the seed by them sown, it would be diffi- 
cult to account for the fact, that so soon after the 
age of the apostles the seeds of many of these er- 
rors should have commenced to germinate. 

By these admissions, however, we are not to be 
understood as implying that the incipient corrup- 
tions in the Christian worship of the second or the 
third century bore any comparison in enormity to 
that gross system of superstition and idolatry which 
was subsequently established and perpetuated in 
Rome, under the abused name of Christianity, and 
which is so truthfully and graphically described by 
Dr. Middleton in the following work. 

No ! at the epoch of Constantine's conversion.* 
the Pantheon at Rome was still occupied by its an- 
cient gods, and Christians universally abominated, 
as " the accursed thing," the bowing down to idols 
of wood or of stone. The marble Jupiters of Ro- 
man mythology had not then transferred their honors 
to the Saint Peters of Roman, Christianity (?) nor 
had the statues of Pagan goddesses yielded their 

* A. D. 312. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXI 

names and their honors to the Madonnas or the 
saints, at present adored under the figures of the 
same identical idols. The pretended wood of the 
true cross had not yet been dragged from its obscu- 
rity to be enshrined in a thousand places, as incen- 
tives to idolatry, nor had the fictitious bones of saints 
or of impostors been raked from their graves to be 
the instruments for fraud and "lying wonders," by 
a corrupt and apostate priesthood. 

For three centuries after the ascension of Christ, 
the wisest and the best of men united in condemn- 
ing even the least approach towards the worship of 
images. " It is an injury to God," says Justin Mar- 
tyr, in the second century, " to make an image of 
him in base wood or stone."* " We Christians," 
says Origen, in the third century, when writing 
against his infidel antagonist, " have nothing to do 
with images, on account of the second command- 
ment ; the first thing we teach those who come 
to us is, to despise idols and all images ; it being 
the peculiar character of the Christian religion to 
raise our minds above images, agreeably to the law 
which God himself has given to mankind. "f " God 
ought to be worshipped," says Augustine, in the 
fourth century, " without an image ; images serv- 
ing only to bring the Deity into contempt."^ The 
same bishop elsewhere asserts that " it would be 

* Justin's Apology, ii. page 44. 
t Origen against Cclsus, 1. v. 7. 
I Augustine de Civit Dei., 1. vii. c. 5. 



XX11 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

impious in a Christian to set up a corporeal image 
of God in a church ; and that he would be thereby 
guilty of the sacrilege condemned by St. Paul, of 
turning the glory of the incorruptible God into an 
image made like to corruptible man. 57 * 

The testimony of these fathers is merely cited as 
historical evidence as to the state of opinion on this 
subject in their day, not as matter of authority ; 
because were their testimony in favor of the prac- 
tice of this popish idolatry, as it is of some other 
early corruptions, still their authority would weigh 
nothing with genuine Protestants, in favor of a prac- 
tice so plainly opposed, as is the worship of images, 
to the letter and the spirit of the Bible. 

Some of the fathers, as Tertullian, Clemens Alex- 
andrinus, and Origen, carried their opposition to 
all sorts of images to such an extent, as to teach that 
the Scriptures forbid altogether the arts of statuary 
and painting.*)* Now while it is admitted that they 
were mistaken in this construction of the second 
commandment, — for we are only forbidden to make 
graven images for the purpose of bowing down to 
them and serving them (Exodus xx. 5), — yet the 
fact itself, of their expressing such an opinion, is the 
most conclusive proof possible, that they knew no- 
thing whatever of the image-worship which sprung 

* Augustine, de Fide, et Symb., c. vii. 

t See Bower's History of the Popes, vol. ii. page 34, Amer- 
ican edition, for several testimonies from Tertullian, Clemens, 
and Origen, on this point. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XX111 

up a few centuries later, which was embodied and 
perpetuated in the apostate church of Rome, and 
which is so truthfully exposed and so deservedly re- 
buked in the work of Dr. Middleton. 

A singular proof of the abhorrence in which the 
worship of images was still held as late as towards 
the close of the fourth century, is furnished by a 
letter written by Epiphanius of Salamis to John of 
Jerusalem, about that time. " Having entered,'*' says 
he, "into a church in a village of Palestine, named 
Anablatha, I found there a veil which was suspend- 
ed at the door, and painted with a representation, 
whether of Jesus Christ or of some saint, for I do 
not recollect whose image it was, but seeing that in 
opposition to the authority of Scripture, there was a 
human image in the church of Jesus Christ, I tore it 
in pieces. "* 

In the fifth century the practice of ornamenting 
the churches with pictures had become very com- 
mon. At the close of the sixth century and the be- 
ginning of the seventh, Gregory unwisely granted 
the use of images " as helps to the memory, or as 
books to instruct those who could not read," though 
he strictly forbade the ivorship of them " in any man- 
ner whatsoever.'"')" Of course the distinction invented 
by modern popish idolaters, between sovereign or 
subordinate, absolute or relative, proper or impro- 
per worship — the worship of latria, dulia, or hyper - 

* Epiph. apud Hieron., torn. 2. Epist. 6. 
t Greg. Epist.— Lib. vii. Epist. 110. 



XXIV INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

diilla — of course, I say, these scholastic distinctions 
were not then invented, and were therefore unknown 
to Gregory. They never would have been thought 
of, but for the necessity which papists found of in- 
venting some way of warding off the charge of idol- 
atry, so frequently and so justly alleged against 
them. The words of Gregory, in his letter to Sere- 
nus, bishop of Marseilles, were, " adorari vero im- 
agines omnibus modis devita," which the Roman 
Catholic historian, Dupin, has translated, " that he 
must not allow images to be worshipped in any man- 
ner whatever ."* 

The precedent was, however, a dangerous one ; 
which Gregory thus established, by permitting the 
use of images in the churches. He might have an- 
ticipated that if suffered at all, they would not long 
continue to be regarded merely as books for the ig- 
norant ; especially when, as soon after happened in 
this dark age, the most ridiculous stories began to 
be circulated relative to the marvellous prodigies 
and miraculous cures effected by the presence or the 
contact of these wondrous blocks of wood and of stone. 
The result that might naturally have been antici- 
pated, came to pass. These images became idols ; 
the ignorant multitude reverently kissed them, and 
" bowed themselves down" before them ; and in a very 
few years a system of idol-worship had sprung up 
equally debasing with that which was witnessed by 

* Dupin's Eccles. Hist., vol. v. page 122. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXV 

Dr. Middleton, and which prevails at the present day 
in Italy and other popish countries of Europe. 

When this system of image-worship had become 
a part of the established religion of the apostate 
church of Rome, and was sanctioned and defended 
by her sovereign Pontiffs,* the step was an easy 
one to the adoption of many of the images of Pagan 
deities, found in the heathen temples of that city, to 
be the representatives of real or imaginary Chris- 
tian saints and martyrs ; and when this step had been 
taken, it is not surprising that most of the ceremo- 
nies, anciently performed in honor of these images, 
by the pontifices, augurs, and haruspices of Pagan 
Rome, should be perpetuated by the pontifices, the 
cardinals and the priests of nominally Christian Rome. 

Some, perhaps, may be disposed to think, with 
Bishop Warburton, that the idolatrous ceremonies 
and worship of the false church of Rome, are not to 
be traced to any Pagan originals from which they 
were copied, but that they are to be ascribed rather 
to " one common nature * * * debased by super- 
stition, and speaking to all its tribes of individuals ; n 

* In the year 713 pope Constantine issued an edict by which 
he pronounced those accursed, " who deny that veneration to 
the holy images which is appointed by the church,"— "Sanctis 
imaginibus verier ationem constitutam ab ecclcsia, qui ncgarcni 
Warn ipsam." The insane energy of the two immediate suc- 
cessors of Constantine, popes Gregory II. and Gregory III. in 
favor of image-worship is well known. For an account there- 
of, the Editor would refer the reader to his " History of Ro- 
manism," pp. 157-161. 

3 



XXVI INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

and that, notwithstanding their exact resemblance, 
" the same spirit of superstition, operating in equal 
circumstances, made both Papists and Pagans truly 

ORIGINALS."* 

It is true, indeed, as a learned prelate of the pres- 
ent day has most forcibly shown, that most of "the 
errors of Romanism " (and this among the rest) 
may be " traced to their origin in human nature ;"j" 
yet while it is admitted that the depraved nature of 
man, and its tendency to superstition, may account 
for the readiness with which the early corrupters of 
Christianity adopted these pagan ceremonies ; yet 
we believe there are but few careful readers of Dr. 
Middleton's work who will doubt that the ceremon- 
ies themselves, such as the offering of incense, use 
of holy water, burning candles in the day time, 
votive offerings, road-gods, &c, as well as in many 
instances the images themselves, were copied imme- 
diately from the pagan worship of ancient Rome. 

Even if there should be any who shall conclude, 
with Bishop Warburton, that both the idolatry of 
Popery, and the idolatry of Paganism are originals, 
and that the former is not therefore (as Dr. Middle- 
ton infers, and most readers will believe) a mere 
copy of the latter ; still, they will be compelled to 
admit with the Bishop, who says, when referring to 

* See Bishop Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses, vol. 
ii. page 355. 

t Allusion is here made to the valuable work of Dr. Whately, 
Archbishop of Dublin, entitled " The errors of Romanism 
traced to their origin in Human Nature." 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXVll 

our author and other able writers upon the resem- 
blance of Paganism and Popery, that — " They have 
indeed shown an exact and surprising likeness in a 
great variety of instances."* 

As, therefore, the facts related by our author, 
and the close resemblance which he proves to exist 
between the two systems, are fully admitted by Bish- 
op Warburton, and the difference of opinion between 
him and our author is only in respect to the infer- 
ence Dr. Middleton draws from these facts (an in- 
ference from which, we think, few readers will dis- 
sent), this passing allusion to the criticism of the 
learned Bishop will be regarded as a sufficient no- 
tice thereof, without swelling the size of the volume 
by inserting entire the critique of the Bishop and 
the reply of our author. 

The education, learning and tastes of Dr. Middle- 
ton pre-eminently qualified him for the task he 
assumed, and which he has so well performed in the 
following work. That task was to describe the cer- 
emonies of the Christianized Paganism of Rome, as 
they fell under his own observation during a visit to 
that city in the year 1724, and, as the title intimates, 
to show the " exact conformity between Popery and 
Paganism," and to demonstrate that " the religion 
of the present Romans is derived from their heathen 
ancestors." 

Educated at Cambridge University for the min- 
istry of the Church of England, he was chosen in the 

* See Warburton's Divine Legation, ut sujrra. 



XXV111 INTRODUCTORY ESS 



year 1706, at the age of 23. a fellow of Trinity 
College, and a few years later, on account of his 
vast and varied learning, he was appointed princi- 
pal librarian of the University. Perfectly familiar 
with the whole range of ancient classic literature, 
he was prepared on his visit to Rome, at the ma- 
ture age of 41, at once to recall to mind the descrip- 
tions of the ceremonies of ancient Pagan worship 
scattered throughout the pages of the Greek and 
Latin historians and poets; and thus to le cognize 
at a glance, in the classic pictures of Homer or of 
Herodotus, of Virgil or of Livy, the originals of those 
parodies on ancient Paganism, presented in the 
nominally Christian worship of Rome. How well 
he improved these advantages, is manifest from his 
celebrated " Letter from Rome,'* which has now 
stood the test of upwards of a century, and : 
held in the highest estimation by the whole Protes- 
tant world, as a monument of his extraordinary 
learning, industry, and research. 

Soon after the appearance of the three first edi- 
tions of the work, which followed each other in 
rapid successi jn. it was attacked by a popish writer, 
in the preface to a work entitled " the Catholic 
Christian Instructed,*' and in reply to this attack, 
Dr. Middleton wrote the " Defence of his Letter from 
Rome/' which is printed (for the first time, we be- 
. in America) in connection with the present 
edition of his work. This defence is but little in- 
ferior in value, and not at all inferior in learning to 



!tV 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXIX 

the original work. In the edition from which we 
print, viz. that of London, 1755, the defence is pre- 
fixed to the work, under the title of " a Prefatory 
Discourse to the Letter from Rome." We have 
thought it more proper to insert it after the original 
work, where it appropriately belongs in the order of 
time, and to entitle it, as it in reality is, " a Defence 
of the Letter from Rome." 

Both the "Letter" of Dr. Middleton and the 
" Defence " thereof, were originally accompanied 
by a multitude of learned references and notes, in 
the Greek, Latin, French, and Italian languages. 
In many instances the very gist of the argument 
seemed to the present editor to depend upon the 
accuracy and the point of these quotations from 
classical and Romish authors. He has, therefore, 
deemed it expedient to insert the most important of 
these notes, omitting only such as appeared least 
necessary to establish the argument of Dr. Mid- 
dleton. To aid the unlearned reader, he has also 
given a translation of the quotations in foreign lan- 
guages, unless, as in many instances, a translation 
had already been embodied in the text. As the 
editor is responsible for such translations, in order 
to distinguish them, as well as a few additional 
notes, which he has appended, they are denoted by 
his initial [D.] 

The editor has also divided the i: Letter from 
Rome" into Chapters, and the "Defence" into 
Sections, with appropriate captions, and prefixed an 
3* 



XXX INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

Analytical Index ; being satisfied, from former ex- 
perience, that such an arrangement constitutes a 
powerful aid to the memory, and much enhances 
the practical value of a work intended for popular 
perusal ; — to be read, studied, and remembered. 

The editor commends the present edition of the 
valuable work of Dr. Middleton to the American 
public, with the earnest hope that it may be owned 
of God as a means of arresting the progress, in 
this favored land, of a system of idolatrous super- 
stition, as contrary to the Scriptures as it is insult- 
ing to reason ; and of opening the eyes of every lover 
of his Bible and of his country, to the true char- 
acter of that anti-Christian and apostate church, 
which is straining every nerve to regain on this 
western continent, that despotic power and unbound- 
ed influence which it once exercised on the eastern. 

J. DOWLING. 



Berean Parsonage, 
New- York, March 1st, 1847 



.1 



DR. MIDDLETON'S PREFACE. 



The following reflections were the subject of sev- 
eral Letters written by me from Rome, to my friends 
in England ; and as the argument of them was 
much upon my thoughts, and always in my view, 
during my stay in Italy, so there hardly passed a 
day, that did not afford me fresh matter and proof 
for the confirmation of it, till my collections grew 
up to the size in which they now appear. Upon a 
review of them at my return, I found it necessary, 
for the sake of method and connection, to dispose 
them into one continued argument, and to collect 
into one view, under the form of a single letter, 
what had been more slightly and separately touched 
in several. 

Many writers, I know, have treated the same sub- 
ject before me ; some of which I have never seen ; 
but those, whom I have looked into, handle it in a 
manner so different from what I have pursued, that 
I am under no apprehension of being thought a 
plagiary, or to have undertaken a province already 
occupied. My observations are grounded on facts, 



XXX11 DR. MIDDLETON'S PREFACE. 

of which I have been an eye-witness myself, and 
which others perhaps had not the opportunity of 
examining personally, or considering so particularly 
as I have done ; and in my present representation 
of them I have not claimed the allowed privilege 
of a traveller, to be believed on my own word, but 
for each article charged on the Church of Rome, 
have generally produced such vouchers as they 
themselves will allow to be authentic. 

Much leisure, with an infirm state of health, was 
the cause of my journey to Italy; and on such an 
occasion, I thought it my duty, to use the opportu- 
nity given me by Providence, towards detecting and 
exposing, as far as I was able, the true spring and 
source of those impostures, which, under the name 
of religion, have been forged from time to time, for 
no other purpose than to oppress the liberty, and 
engross the property of mankind. 

But whatever be my opinion of the general scheme 
of that religion, yet, out of justice to the particular 
possessors of it, I think myself obliged to declare, 
that I found much candor, humanity, and politeness 
in all those, whom I had the honor to converse with ; 
and though my character and profession were well 
known at Rome, yet I received particular civilities 
from persons of the first distinction both in the 
Church and the Court. 



A LETTER FROM ROME, 



SHOWING THE EXACT CONFORMITY BETWEEN 



POPERY AND PAGANISM. 



CHAPTER I. 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME, AND MOTIVES OF THE JOURNEY. 

Sir : I am sensible, that by this time you 
cannot but be desirous to have some account 
of the entertainment that I have met with in 
Rome ; for as you have often heard me declare 
a very high opinion of the pleasure which a 
curious man might reasonably expect to find in 
it, so you will be impatient to hear how far my 
expectation has been answered, and my curi- 
osity satisfied. You have observed, without 
doubt, from my former letters, that the pleasure 
of my travels seemed to grow upon me in pro- 
portion to the progress which I made on my 
journey, and to my approach towards Rome ; 
and that every place, which I had seen the last, 
still pleased me the most. This was certainly 
true in my road through Lyons, Turin, Genoa, 



34 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

Florence ; but is much more remarkably so with 
regard to Rome ; which, of all the places that I 
have yet seen, or ever shall see, is by far the 
most delightful; since all those very things, 
which had recommended any other place tome, 
and which I had been admiring before, single 
and dispersed, in the several cities through 
which 1 passed, may be seen in Rome, as it 
were, in one view, and not only in greater plenty, 
but in greater perfection. 

1 have often been thinking, that this voyage 
to Italy might properly enough be compared to 
the common stages and journey of life. At our 
setting out through France, the pleasures that 
we find, like those of our youth, are of the gay 
fluttering kind, which grow by degrees, as we 
advance towards Italy, more solid, manly, and 
rational, but attain not their full perfection till 
we reach Rome, from which point we no sooner 
turn homewards, than they begin again gradu- 
ally to decline, and though sustained for a while 
in some degree of vigor, through the other stages 
and cities of Italy, yet dwindle at last into weari- 
ness and fatigue, and a desire to be at home ; 
where the traveller finishes his course, as the 
old man does his days, with the usual privilege 
of being tiresome to his friends, by a perpetual 
repetition of past adventures. 

But to return to my story. Rome is certainly 
of all cities in the world the most entertaining 
to strangers; for whether we consider it in its 
ancient or present, its civil or ecclesiastical state ; 
whether we admire the great perfection of arts 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME. 35 

in the noble remains of old Rome ; or the revival 
of the same arts in the beautiful ornaments of 
modern Rome; every one, of what genius or 
taste soever, will be sure to find something or 
other, that will deserve his attention, and en- 
gage his curiosity ; and even those who have 
no particular taste or regard at all for things cu- 
rious, but travel merely for the sake of fashion, 
and to waste time, will still spend that time with 
more satisfaction at Rome, than any where else ; 
from that easy manner in which they find them- 
selves accommodated with all the conveniences 
of life ; that general civility and respect to stran- 
gers; that quiet and security, which every man 
of prudence is sure to find in it. 

But one thing is certainly peculiar to this city ; 
that though travellers have generally been so 
copious in their descriptions of it, and there are 
published in all parts of Europe such volumi- 
nous collections of its curiosities, yet it is a sub- 
ject never to be exhausted ; since in the infinite 
variety of entertainment which it affords, every 
judicious observer will necessarily find some- 
thing or other that has either escaped the search- 
es of others, or that will at least afford matter 
for more particular and curious remarks, than a 
common traveller is capable of making, or a 
general collector has time to reflect on. The 
learned Montfaucon, speaking of the Villa of 
Prince Borghese, says, " though its antique mon- 
uments and rarities have been a hundred times 
described in print, that many more of them still 
have been overlooked and omitted, than are yet 



36 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

published." And if this be true of one single col- 
lection, what an idea must we have of the im- 
mense treasure of the same kind, which the 
whole city is able to furnish ? 

As for my own journey to this place, it was 
not, I own, any motive of devotion, which draws 
so many others hither, that occasioned it. My 
zeal was not bent on visiting the holy thresholds 
of the Apostles, or kissing the feet of their suc- 
cessor. I knew that their ecclesiastical anti- 
quities were mostly fabulous and legendary ; 
supported by fictions and impostures, too gross 
to employ the attention of a man of sense. For 
should we allow that St. Peter had been at 
Rome, (of which many learned men, however, 
have doubted,) yet they had not, I knew, any 
authentic monuments remaining of him ; any 
visible footsteps subsisting, to demonstrate his 
residence among them : and should we ask them 
for any evidence of this kind, they would refer 
us to the impression of his face on the wall of 
the dungeon, in which he was confined ; or to 
a fountain in the bottom of it, raised miraculously 
by him out of the rock, in order to baptize his 
fellow prisoners; or to the mark of our Sa- 
viours feet in a stone, on which he appeared 
to him, and stopped him, as he was flying out 
of the city from a persecution then raging ; in 
memory of which there was a church built on 
the spot, called St. Mary delle Piante, or of the 
marks of the feet ; which falling into decay was 
supplied by a chapel, at the expense of our Car- 
dinal Pole. But the stone itself, more valuable, 



MOTIVES OF THE JOURNEY. 37 

as their writers say,* than any of the precious 
ones, being a perpetual monument and proof of 
the Christian religion, is preserved with all due 
reverence in St. Sebastian's church ; where I 
purchased a print of it, with several others of 
the same kind. 

Or they would appeal, perhaps, to the evi- 
dence of some miracle wrought at his execu- 
tion ; as they do in the case of St. Paul, in a 
church called "At the three Fountains," the 
place where he was beheaded ; on which occa- 
sion, it seems, " Instead of blood there issued 
only milk from his veins ; and his head, when 
separated from the body, having made three 
jumps upon the ground, raised at each place a 
spring of living water, which retains still, as they 
would persuade us, the plain taste of milk :" of 
all which facts we have an account in Baronius, 
Mabillon, and all their gravest authors,! and may 

* Lapis vero ille dignissimus et omni pretioso lapidi ante- 
ferendus, in D. Sebastiani ecclesiam translatus, ibidem, quo par 
est religionis cultu, in perenne Religionis Christianas monu- 
mentum asservatur. Aring. 1. iii. c. 21. 

That stone, most honored, and to be preferred to every pre- 
cious stone, was translated into the church of St. Sebastian, 
where it stands, with all suitable religious reverence, as a per- 
petual monument of the Christian religion.— [D.] 

t Cum sacrum caput obtruncaretur, non tarn fluenta san- 
guinis, quam candidissimi lactis rivuli, &c. It. In ipso autem 
Martyrii loco tres adhuc perexigui jugiter fontes, &c, horum 
primus cseteris dulcior saporem lactis prae se fert, &c. Aring. 
1. iii. c. 2. It. vid. Baronii AnnaL A. D. 69. It. Mabill. Iter. 
Ital. p. 142. 

When the sacred head was cut off, not so much streams of 
blood, as rivulets of the whitest milk, &c. Also, — In the very 
place of the martyrdom, three small fountains, &c— the first of 
these, sweeter than the others, presents the taste of milk, &c. — 
[D.] "4 



38 



POPERY AND PAGANISM. 



see printed figures of them in the description ot 
modern Rome. 

It was no part of my design, to spend my time 
abroad, in attending to the ridiculous fictions of 
this kind. The chief pleasure which I proposed 
to myself was, to visit the genuine remains and 
venerable relics of pagan Rome ; the authentic 
monuments of antiquity, that demonstrate the 
certainty of those histories which are the enter- 
tainment as well as the instruction of our 
younger years ; and which, by the early preju- 
dice of being the first knowledge that we acquire, 
as well as the delight which they give, in de 
scribing the lives and manners of the greatest 
men who ever lived, gain sometimes so much 
upon our riper age as to exclude too often other 
more useful and necessary studies. I could not 
help flattering myself with the joy that I should 
have, in viewing the very place and scene of 
those important events, the knowledge and ex- 
plication of which have ever since been the chief 
employment of the learned and polite world ; iu 
treading that ground, where at every step we 
stumble on the ruins of some fabric described by 
the ancients, and cannot help setting a foot on 
the memorial of some celebrated action in which 
the great heroes of antiquity had been person- 
ally engaged. I amused myself with the 
thoughts of taking a turn in those very walks, 
where Cicero and his friends had held their phi- 
losophical disputations, or of standing on that 
very spot, where he had delivered some of his 
famous orations. 



MOTIVES OF THE JOURNEY. 39 

Such fancies as these, with which I often en- 
tertained myself on my road to Rome, are not, I 
dare say, peculiar to myself, but common to all 
men of reading and education ; whose dreams 
upon a voyage to Italy, like the descriptions of 
theElysian fields, represent nothing to their fan- 
cies but the pleasure of finding out and convers- 
ing with those ancient sages and heroes whose 
characters they have most admired. Nor in- 
deed is this imagination much disappointed in 
the event ; for, as Cicero observes, " Whether it 
be from nature, or some weakness in us, it is 
certain that we are much more affected with the 
sight of those places, where great and famous 
men have spent most part of their lives, than 
either to hear of their actions, or read their 
works;"* and he was not, as he tells us, "so much 
pleased with Athens itself, for its stately build- 
ings or exquisite pieces of art, as in recollecting 
the great men whom it had bred ; in carefully 
visiting their sepulchres ; and finding out the 
place where each had lived, or walked, or held 
his disputations."! This is what every man of 
curiosity will, in the like circumstances, find 
true in himself ; and for my own part, as oft as 
1 have been rambling about in the very rostra of 
old Rome, or in that temple of Concord, where 
Tully assembled the senate in Catiline's conspi- 
racy, I could not help fancying myself much 
more sensible of the force of his eloquence; 
whilst the impression of the place served to 

* Cicero de Fin. v. 
t Cic. de Legibus. ii. 2. 



10 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

warm my imagination to a degree almost equal 
to that of his old audience. 

As therefore my general studies had furnished 
me with a competent knowledge of Roman his- 
tory, as well as an inclination to search more 
particularly into some branches of its antiquities, 
so I had resolved to employ myself chiefly in 
inquiries of this sort ; and to lose as little time as 
possible in taking notice of the fopperies and ri- 
diculous ceremonies of the present religion of 
the place. But I soon found myself mistaken ; 
for the whole form and outward dress of their 
worship seemed so grossly idolatrous and ex- 
travagant, beyond what I had imagined, and 
made so strong an impression on me, Fhat I could 
not help considering it with a particular regard ; 
especially when the very reason which I thought 
would have hindered me from taking any notice 
of it at all, was the chief cause that engaged me 
to pay so much attention to it : for nothing, I 
found, concurred so much with my original in- 
tention of conversing with the ancients, or so 
much helped my imagination to fancy myself 
wandering about in old heathen Rome, as to 
observe and attend to their religious worship, 
all whose ceremonies appeared plainly to have 
been copied from the rituals of primitive Pagan- 
ism, as if handed down by an uninterrupted 
succession from the priests of old, to the priests 
of new Rome ; whilst each of them readily ex- 
plained and called to my mind some passage of 
a classic author, where the same ceremony was 
described as transacted in the same form and 



MOTIVES OF THE JOURNEY. 41 

manner, and in the same place, where I now 
saw it executed before my eyes ; so that as oft as 
I was present at any religious exercise in their 
churches, it was more natural to fancy myself 
looking on at some solemn act of idolatry in old 
Rome, than assisting at a worship, instituted on 
the principles, and formed upon the plan of 
Christianity. 

Many of our divines have, I know, with much 
learning, and solid reasoning, charged and ef- 
fectually proved the crime of idolatry on the 
church of Rome ; but these controversies (in 
which there is still something plausible to be 
said on the other side, and where the charge 
is constantly denied, and with much subtlety 
evaded) are not capable of giving that convic- 
tion, which I immediately received from my 
senses ; the surest witnesses of fact in all cases ; 
and which no man can fail to be furnished 
with, who sees Popery, as it is exercised in Italy, 
in the full pomp and display of its pageantry, 
and practising all its arts and powers without 
caution or reserve. This similitude of the popish 
and pagan religion seemed so evident and clear, 
and struck my imagination so forcibly, that I 
soon resolved to give myself the trouble of 
searching to the bottom, and to explain and de- 
monstrate the certainty of it, by comparing to- 
gether the principal and most obvious parts of 
each worship; which, as it was my first em- 
ployment after I came to Rome, shall be the sub- 
ject of my first letter. Reserving therefore to 

my next, the account that I design to give you 
4* 



42 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

of the antiquities and other curiosities of the 
place, I shall find matter enough for this time to 
tire both you and myself, in showing the source 
and origin of the popish ceremonies, and the 
exact conformity of them with those of their 
pagan ancestors. 



CHAPTER II. 

INCENSE, HOLY WATER, AND LIGHTED CANDLES. 

The very first thing that a stranger must ne- 
cessarily take notice of, as soon as he enters their 
churches, is the use of incense or perfumes in 
their religious offices. The first step which he 
takes within the door, will be sure to make him 
sensible of it, by the offence that he will imme- 
diately receive from the smell, as well as smoke 
of this incense, with which the whole church 
continues filled for some time after every solemn 
service ; a custom received directly from Pagan- 
ism, and which presently called to my mind the 
old descriptions of the heathen temples and al- 
tars, which are seldom or never mentioned by 
the ancients without the epithet of perfumed or 
incensed.* 

In some of their principal churches, where 
you have before you, in one view, a great num- 

* Saepe Jovem vidi, cum jam sua mittere vellet, 
Fulmina, thuredato sustinuisse man um. — Ovid. 

Often have I seen Jupiter, when he was about to dart his 
thunderbolts, upon incense being oilercd, to hold back his 
hand.— [D.] 

Thuricremis cum dona imponeret Aris. — Virg. JEn. iv. 
ver. 453. 

When he placed gifts on altars perfumed with incense. — 
[D.] 



44 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

ber of altars, and all of them smoking at once 
with steams of incense, how natural is it to 
imagine one's self transported into the temple 
of some heathen deity, or that of the Paphian 
Venus described by Virgil ? 

Ubi templum illi, centumque Sabaeo 

Thure calent arae, sertisque recentibus halant. — JEn* i. 417. 

{ Her hundred altars there with garlands crown'd, 
And richest incense smoking, breathe around 
Sweet odors," &c. 

Under the pagan emperors, the use of incense 
for any purpose of religion was thought so con- 
trary to the obligations of Christianity, that, in 
their persecutions, the very method of trying and 
convicting a Christian was by requiring him 
only to throw the least grain of it into the censer 
or on the altar.* 

Under the Christian emperors, on the other 
hand, it was looked upon as a rite so peculiarly 
heathenish, that the very places or houses, where 
it could be proved to have been done, were by 

* Maximus dixit : Thure tantum Deos, Nicander, honorato. 
Nicander dixit : Quomodo potest homo Christianus lapides 
et ligna colere, Deo relicto immortali? &c — Vid. Act. Mar- 
tyr. Nicandri, fyc, apud Mabill. Iter. Jtal. T. i. Par. ii. p. 247. 

Maximus said — 'Only honor the gods with incense, Nican- 
der.' But Nicander replied— 'How can a Christian man for- 
sake the eternal God, and worship wood and stone'?' — See Acts 
of the Martyrs, Nicander, cf»c, in MabUlon, Vol. ii. p. 247. — 

Adeo ut Christianos vere sacrificare crederent, ubi summis 
digitis paululum thuris injecissent acerram, &c. — Vide Du- 
rant. de Ritib. L. i. c. 9. 

So that they believed Christians to be really sacrificing (to 
the idols) when they threw the smallest particle of incense into 
the censer with the tips of their fingers.— [D.] 



INCENSE — HOLY WATER. 45 

a law of Theodosius confiscated to the govern- 
ment. 

In the old bass-reliefs, or pieces of sculpture, 
where any heathen sacrifice is represented, we 
never fail to observe a boy in sacred habit, which 
was always white, attending on the priest, with 
a little chest or box in his hands, in which this 
incense was kept for the use of the altar.* And 
in the same manner still in the church of Rome, 
there is always a boy in surplice, waiting on 
the priest at the altar with the sacred utensils, 
and among the rest, the Thuribuhim or vessel 
of incense, which the priest, with many ridicu- 
lous motions and crossings, waves several times, 
as it is smoking around and over the altar in 
different parts of the service. 

The next thing that will, of course, strike 
one's imagination, is their use of holy water; for 
nobody ever goes in or out of a church, but is 
either sprinkled by the priest, who attends for 
that purpose on solemn days, or else serves him- 
self with it from a vessel, usually of marble, 
placed just at the door, not unlike to one of our 
baptismal fonts. Now this ceremony is so no- 
toriously and directly transmitted to them from 
Paganism, that their own writers make not the 
least scruple to own it. The Jesuit la Cerda, in 
his notes on a passage of Virgil where this prac- 
tice is mentioned, says, " Hence was derived the 
custom of holy church, to provide purifying or 

* Da mihi Thura, pucr, pingucs facientia flamnias.-Oi^/. 
Give me the incense, boy, making rich flames. — [D.J 



46 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

holy water at the entrance of their churches/'* 
Jlquaminarium or Amula, says the learned 
Montfaucon, was a vase of holy water, placed 
by the heathen at the entrance of their temples, 
to sprinkle themselves with.t The same vessel 
was by the Greeks called Periranterion ; two of 
which, the one of gold, the other of silver, were 
given by Croesus to the temple of Apollo at Del- 
phi ; and the custom of sprinkling themselves 
was so necessary a part of all their religious 
offices, that the method of excommunication 
seems to have been by prohibiting to offenders 
the approach and use of the holy water-pot. The 
very composition of this holy water was the 
same also among the heathen as it is now among 
the papists, being nothing more than a mixture 
of salt with common water; and the form of 
the sprinkling brush, called by the ancients as- 
persorium or aspergillum^ (which is much the 
same with what the priests now make use of,) 
may be seen in bass-reliefs or ancient coins, 
wherever the insignia, or emblems of the pagan 
priesthood are described, of which it is generally 
one.t 

* Spargens rore levi, &c. — Virg. j£n. vi. 230. 

Sprinkling with the light dew, &c. — [D.] 

t Vid. Montfauc. Antiquit. T. ii. P. i. L. iii. c. 6. 

KadapaTg 61 Apoaois 
*A(pv6papdfj€uoi artiyzTt vaovg. Eurip. lone, V. 96. 

Ascend the temples, having sprinkled yourselves with the 
pure drops. — Euripides. — [D.] 

t Vid. Montfauc. Antiq. T. ii. P. i. L. iii. c. 6. 
It may be seen on a silver coin of Julius Caesar, as well as 
many other emperors. — Ant. Agostini discorso sopra le Mcdaglie. 



HOLY WATER. 47 

Platina, in his Lives of the Popes, and other 
authors, ascribe the institution of this holy wa- 
ter to pope Alexander the first, who is said to 
have lived about the year of Christ 113. But it 
could not be introduced so early ; since, for some 
ages after, we find the primitive fathers speak- 
ing of it, as a custom purely heathenish, and con- 
demning it as impious and detestable. Justin 
Martyr says, "That it was invented by demons, 
in imitation of the true baptism signified by the 
prophets, that their votaries might also have their 
pretended purifications by water ;"* and the em- 
peror Julian, out of spite to the Christians, used 
to order the victuals in the markets to be sprink- 
led with holy water, on purpose either to starve, 
or force them to eat, what, by their own prin- 
ciples, they esteemed polluted. 

Thus we see what contrary notions the prim- 
itive and Romish church have of this ceremony ; 
the first condemns it as superstitious, abominable, 
and irreconcilable with Christianity ; the latter 
adopts it as highly edifying, and applicable to 
the improvement of Christian piety. The one 
looks upon it as the contrivance of the devil, to 
delude mankind; the other as the security of 
mankind against the delusions of the devil. But 
what is still more ridiculous than even the cer- 
emony itself, is to see their learned writers grave- 
ly reckoning up the several virtues and benefits 
derived from the use of it, both to the soul and 

* Kai to \ovrpov d>) tovto aKobcravrcs ot Aaipovcs iia tov TTpo^qrov 
KtKripvyjxivoVj ivf)pyr\oav kcli fxivTifav lavrovs cig ruvg to. Icpn avrdv 

empaivovras. Just. Mart. Apul i. p. 91. Edit. Thirlb. 



43 TOPERY AND PAGANISM. 

the body;* and to crown all, producing a long 
roll of miracles, to attest the certainty of each 
virtue which they ascribe to it.t Why may we 
not then justly apply to the present people ot 
Rome, what was said by the poet of its old in- 
habitants for the use of this very ceremony? 

Ah nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina caedis 
Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua! — Ovid. Fast. ii. 45. 

11 Ah, easy fools, to think that a whole flood 
Of water e'er can purge the stain of blood." 

I do not at present recollect whether the an- 
cients went so far as to apply the use of this ho- 
ly water to the purifying or blessing their horses, 
asses, and other cattle ; or whether this be an 
improvement of modern Rome, which has dedi- 
cated a yearly festival peculiarly to this service, 
called, in their vulgar language, the benediction 
of horses, which is always celebrated with much 
solemnity in the month of January ; when all 
the inhabitants of the city and neighbourhood 
send up their horses, asses, &c, to the convent 
of St. Anthony, near St. Mary the great, where 
a priest in surplice at the church door sprinkles 
with his brush all the animals singly, as they 
are presented to him, and receives from each 
owner a gratuity proportionable to his zeal and 
ability. Amongst the rest, I had my own horses 

* Durant de Ritib. L. i. c. 21. Hospinian de origine Tem- 
plorum. L. ii, c. 25. 

t Hujus aquae benedictse virtus variis miraculis illustratur, 
&c. — Durant. ibid. 

The virtue of this holy water is illustrated by various mira- 
cles, &c— [D.] 



HOLY WATER. 



49 



blest at the expense of about eighteen pence of 
our money ; as well to satisfy my own curiosity, 
as to humour the coachman ; who was persuad- 
ed, as the common people generally are, that 
some mischance would befall them within the 
year, if they wanted the benefit of this benedic- 
tion. Mabillon, in giving an account of this 
function, of which he happened also to be an 
eye-witness, makes no other reflection upon 
it, than that it was new and unusual to him.* 
I have met indeed with some hints of a prac- 
tice not foreign to this, among the ancients ; of 
sprinkling their horses with water inthecircen- 
sian games : but whether this was done out of a 
superstitious view of inspiring any virtue, or pu- 
rifying them for those races, which were es- 
teemed sacred ; or merely to refresh them under 
the violence of such an exercise, is not easy to 
determine. But allowing the Romish priests to 
have taken the hint from some old custom of 
Paganism; yet this however must be granted 
them, that they alone were capable of cultivat- 
ing so coarse and barren a piece of superstition 
into a revenue sufficient for the maintenance of 
forty or fifty idle monks. 

* In Festo Sancti Antonii prope S. Mariam Majorem, ritus 
nobis insolitus visus est, ut quicquid equorum est in urbe du- 
cantur cum suis phaleris ad portarn ecclesiae, ubi aqua lustrali 
ab uno e patribus omnes et singuli asperguntur. Mabill. It. 
Ital. p. 136. 

On the feast of St. Anthony, a rite unusual to me was seen 
near the church of St. Mary Major. Each one of the horses 
in the city is led with his trappings to the door of the church, 
where they are all and each sprinkled with holy water by one 
oi the monks.— [D.] 



50 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

No sooner is a man advanced a little forward 
into their churches, and begins to look about 
him, but he will find his eyes and attention at- 
tracted by a number of lamps and wax candles, 
which are constantly burning before the shrines 
and images of their saints. "In all the great 
churches of Italy,' 7 says Mabillon,* "they hang 
up lamps at every altar ;" a sight which will not 
only surprise a stranger by the novelty of it, but 
will furnish him with another proof and exam- 
ple of the conformity of the Romish with the 
Pagan worship; by recalling to his memory 
many passages of the heathen writers, where 
their perpetual lamps and candles are described 
as continually burning before the altars and 
statues of their deities.t 

Herodotus tells us of the Egyptians, (who first 
introduced the use of lights or lamps into their 
temples,) that they had a famous yearly festival 
called, from the principal ceremony of it, the 
lighting up of candles ;% but there is scarcely 
a single festival at Rome which might not for 
the same reason be called by the same name. 

* Ad singulas ecclesiae aras (qui ritusin omnibus Italiae Ba- 
silicis observatur) singula? appensae sunt Lampades. Mobil. 
It. Itol. p. 25. 

t Centum aras posuit, vigilemque sacraverat ignem. Virg. 
Mn. iv. 200. 

He placed a hundred altars, and consecrated the watchful 
fire. Virgil.— [D.] 

X Kai ttj bpTJi ovvofia icecrai \v^voKairi. Herod. L. ii. 62. 
Edit. Lond. 

And the name applied to the festival was LychnokaU (that 
is, the festival of Burning Iximps) .— [D .] 



LIGHTED CANDLES. 51 

The primitive writers frequently expose the 
folly and absurdity of this heathenish custom ;* 
" they light up candles to God," says Lactantius, 
11 as if he lived in the dark ; and do not they de- 
serve to pass for madmen, who offer lamps to 
the author and giver of light?" 

In the collections of old inscriptions, we find 
many instances of presents and donations from 
private persons, of lamps and candlesticks to the 
temples and altars of their gods ; a piece of zeal, 
which continues still the same in modern Rome, 
where each church abounds with lamps of 
massy silver, and sometimes even of gold ; the 
gifts of princes, and other persons of distinction ; 
and it is surprising to see how great a number 
of this kind are perpetually burning before the 
altars of their principal saints, or miraculous 
images; as St. Anthony of Padua, or the lady 
of Loretto ; as well as the vast profusion of wax 
candles, with which their churches are illumi- 
nated on every great festival; when the high 
altar, covered with gold and silver plate, brought 
out of their treasuries, and stuck full of wax 
lights disposed in beautiful figures, looks more 
like the rich side-board of some great prince, 
dressed out for a feast, than an altar to pay di- 
vine worship at. 

* Hospin. de Orig. Templor. L. ii. 22. 



CHAPTER III. 

VOTIVE GIFTS, OR OFFERINGS. 

But a stranger will not be more surprised at 
the number of lamps, or wax lights burning be- 
fore their altars, than at the number of offerings, 
or votive gifts, which are hanging all around 
them, in consequence of vows made in the time 
of danger ; and in gratitude for deliverances and 
cures, wrought in sickness or distress ; a prac- 
tice so common among the heathen, that no one 
custom of antiquity is so frequently mentioned 
by all their writers ; and many of their original 
donaria, or votive offerings, are preserved to this 
day, in the cabinets of the curious, viz., images 
of metal, stone or clay, as well as legs, arms, and 
other parts of the body, which had formerly been 
hung up in their temples, in testimony of some 
divine favor or cure effected by their tutelar de- 
ity in that particular member :* but the most 
common of all offerings were pictures, repre- 
senting the history of the miraculous cure or 

* Vid. Montfauc. Antiquit. T. ii. Par. I, L. iv. c. 4, 5, 6, 



VOTIVE OFFERINGS. 53 

deliverance, vouchsafed upon the vow of the 
donor. 

Nunc, dea, nunc succurre mihi ; nam posse mederi 
Picta docet templis multa tabella tuis. Tibul. El. i. 3. 

" Now, goddess, help, for thou canst help bestow, 
As all these pictures round thy altars show." 

A friend of Diagoras the philosopher, called 
the Atheist, having found him once in a temple, 
as the story is told by Cicero, "You," says he, 
" who think the gods take no notice of human 
affairs, do not you see here by this number of 
pictures, how many people, for the sake of their 
vows, have been saved in storms at sea, and 
got safe into harbour ?" " Yes," says Diagoras, 
"I see how it is; for those are never painted who 
happen to be drowned."* 

The temples of iEsculapius were more espe- 
cially rich in these offerings, which Livy says, 
were "the price and pay for the cures that he 
had wrought for the sick :"t where they used al- 
ways to hang up, and expose to common view, 
in tables of brass or marble, a catalogue of all 
the miraculous cures which he had performed 
for his votaries : a remarkable fragment of one of 
these tables is still remaining and published in 
Gruter's Collections, having been found in the 
ruins of a temple of that god in the island of 

* Cicero Nat. Deor. L. iii. 253. 

t Turn donis dives erat, quae remediorum salutarium a?gri 
mercedern sacraverant Deo. Liv. L. xlv. 28. 

It (the temple) was rich in the gifts, which the sick had 
consecrated to the god, as a return for his health-giving reme- 
dies— [D. J 

5* 



54 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

the Tiber at Rome ; upon which the learned 
Montfaucon makes this reflection : that " in it 
are either seen the wiles of the devil, to deceive 
the credulous; or else the tricks of Pagan 
priests, suborning men to counterfeit diseases 
and miraculous cures."* 

Now this piece of superstition, had been found 
of old so beneficial to the priesthood, that it could 
not fail of being taken into the scheme of the 
Romish worship : where it reigns at this day in 
as full height and vigor, as in the ages of Pagan 
idolatry; and in so gross a manner as to give 
scandal and offence even to some of their own 
communion. Polydore Virgil, after having de- 
scribed this practice of the ancients, "in the 
same manner," says he, "do we now offer up in 
our churches little images of wax ; and as oft as 
any part of the body is hurt, as the hand or foot, 
&c, we presently make a vow to God, or one of 
his saints, to whom upon our recovery we make 
an offering of that hand or foot in wax: which 
custom is now come to that extravagance, that 
we do the same thing for our cattle, which we 
do for ourselves, and make offerings on account 
of our oxen, horses, sheep; where a scrupulous 
man will question whether in this we imitate 
the religion or the superstition of our ancestors."! 

The altar of St. Phillip Neri, says Baronius, 
"shines with votive pictures and images, the 
proofs of as many miracles ; receiving every 
day the additional lustre of fresh offerings from 

* Montfauc. Antiq T. ii. P. i. L. iv. c. 6. 
t Polydore Virgil de Inv. Rer. L. v. i. 



VOTIVE OFFERINGS. 55 

those, who have been favored with fresh bene- 
fits ;"* amongst whom the present Popet himself 
pays, as I have been told, a yearly acknowledg- 
ment, for a miraculous deliverance that he ob- 
tained by the invocation of this saint, when he 
had liked to have perished under the ruins of a 
house, overturned in an earthquake. 

There is commonly so great a number of 
these offerings hanging up in their churches, 
that, instead of adding any beauty, they often 
give offence, by covering or obstructing the sight 
of something more valuable and ornamental ; 
which we find to have been the case likewise in 
the old heathen temples ; where the priests were 
obliged sometimes to take them down, for the 
obstruction which they gave to the beauty of a 
fine pillar or altar. For they consist chiefly, as 
has been said, of arms and legs, and little figures 
of wood or wax, but especially of pieces of board 
painted, and sometimes indeed fine pictures, de- 
scribing the manner of the deliverance obtained 
by the miraculous interposition of the saint in- 
voked : of which offerings, the blessed Virgin is 
so sure always to carry off the greatest share, that 

* Baronius's Annals i. An. 57. 

This Philip Neri is a saint in high esteem in all parts of 
Italy, where he has many churches dedicated to him ; he was 
founder of the congregation of the oratory, and died about a 
century and a half ago : his body lies under his altar, in a fine 
church called ChiesaNuova, which was founded and built for 
the service of his congregation ; where we see his picture by 
Guido, and his statue by Algardi. Cardinal Baronius, who 
was one of his disciples, lies buried too in the same church. 

t Benedict XIV.— the reigning Pope from A. D. 1740 to 
1758.-[D.] 



56 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

it maybe truly said of her, what Juvenal says of 
the goddess Isis, whose religion was at that time 
in the greatest vogue at Rome, that the painters 
get their livelihood out of her. 

Pictores quis nescit ab Iside pasci. Juvenal. 

" As once to Isis, now it may be said, 
That painters to the Virgin owe their bread." 

As oft as I have had the curiosity to look over 
these donaria, or votive offerings, hanging round 
the shrines of their images, and consider the sev- 
eral stories of each, as they are either expressed 
in painting, or related in writing, I have always 
found them to be mere copies, or verbal transla- 
tions of the originals of heathenism; for the vow 
is often said to have been divinely inspired, or 
expressly commanded ; and the cure and deliv- 
erance to have been wrought, either by the visi- 
ble apparition, and immediate hand of the tute- 
lar saint, or by the notice of a dream, or some 
other miraculous admonition from heaven. 
"There can be no doubt," say their writers, 
" but that the images of our saints often work 
signal miracles, by procuring health to the in- 
firm, and appearing to us often in dreams, to 
suggest something of great moment for our ser- 
vice."* 

And what is all this but a revival of the old 
impostures, and a repetition of the same old sto- 

* Extra omnem controversiam est, Sanctorum Imagines 
mirifica designare miracula, ut et debilibus valetudo bona per 
eos concilietur, saepeque in somniis apparentes optima quseque 
nobis consulant. Durant dc Ritib. L. i. c. 5. 



VOTIVE OFFERINGS. 57 

ries, of which the ancient inscriptions are full, 
with no other difference than what the Pagans 
ascribed to the imaginary help of their deities, 
the Papists as foolishly impute to the favor of 
their saints ; as may be seen by the multitudes 
of instances which all books of antiquities will 
furnish ; and whether the reflection of father 
Montfaucon on the Pagan priests, mentioned 
above, be not in the very same case, as justly 
applicable to the Romish priests, I must leave to 
the judgment of my reader. 

But the gifts and offerings of the kind, that I 
have been speaking of, are the fruits only of 
vulgar zeal, and the presents of inferior people ; 
whilst princes and great persons, as it used to be 
of old, frequently make offerings of large vessels, 
lamps, and even statues of massy silver or gold ; 
with diamonds, and all sorts of precious stones 
of incredible value ; so that the church of Lo- 
retto is now become a proverb for its riches of 
this sort, just as Apollo's temple at Delphi was 
with the ancients on the same account. 

i Ovb* 8aa \atvog ovSog dtpfiropos Ivrds etpyei 
Qoifiov 'AndWuvos. Homer ll. i. 404. 

i: Nor all the wealth Apollo's temple holds 
Can purchase one day's life," &c. 

In the famed treasury of this holy house, one 
part consists, as it did likewise among the 
heathens, of a wardrobe. For the very idols, 
as Tertullian observes, used to be dressed out 
in curious robes, of the choicest stuffs and 
fashion. 



58 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

While they were showing us therefore the 
great variety of rich habits with which that 
treasury abounds ; some covered with precious 
stones, others more curiously embroidered by 
such a queen, or princess, for the use of the mi- 
raculous image; 1 could not help recollecting 
the picture which old Homer draws of queen 
Hecuba of Troy, prostrating herself before the 
miraculous image of Pallas, with a present of 
the richest and best wrought gown that she was 
mistress of. 

Tu5v ev deipapsri 'Eko/jtj <pipe StZpov 'A^^tj, 

'Acrfyo 6' &s dniXauTTe, 6jc. Homer II. £. 293. 

11 A gown she chose, the best and noblest far, 
Sparkling with rich embroidery, like a star," &c. 

The mention of Loretto puts me in mind of 
the surprise that I was in, at the first sight of 
the holy image ; for its face is as black as a ne- 
gro's ; so that one would take it rather for the 
representation of a Proserpine, or infernal deity, 
than what they impiously style it, of the queen 
of heaven. But I soon recollected that this very 
circumstance of its complexion, made it but re- 
semble the more exactly the old idols of Pagan- 
ism, which, in sacred as well as profane writers, 
are described to be black with the perpetual 
smoke of lamps and incense.* 

* Araob. L. vi. Baruch vi. 19, 21. 

" They light their candles, &c. — Their faces are blacked 
through the smoke that cometh out of the temple." 



CHAPTER IV. 



WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 



When a man is once engaged in reflections 
of this kind, imagining himself in some heathen 
temple, and expecting, as it were, some sacrifice 
or other piece of Paganism to ensue, he will not 
be long in suspense, before he sees the finishing 
act and last scene of genuine idolatry, in crowds 
of bigot votaries, prostrating themselves before 
some image of wood or stone, and paying divine 
honors to an idol of their own erecting. Should 
they squabble with us here about the meaning 
of the word idol, St. Jerom has determined it to 
the very case in question, telling us, that u by idols 
are to be understood the images of the dead :"* 
and the worshippers of such images are used al- 
ways in the style of the fathers, as terms synony- 
mous and equivalent to heathens or Pagans.t 

* Idola intelligimus Imagines mortuorum. Hier. Com. in 
Jsa. c. xxxvii. 

t Innumeri sunt in Grrecia exterisque nationibus, qui se in 
discipulatum Christi tradiderunt, non sine ingenti odio eorum 
qui simulacra venerantur. Pamphili Apol. pro Orig. vid. Hi- 
eron. Op. torn. v. p. 233. Ed, Par. 

There are many in Greece, and foreign nations, who give 
themselves up in discipleship to Christ, not without great odium 
on the part of those who venerate (or worship) images.— [D.] 



60 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

As to the practice itself, it was condemned by 
many of the wisest heathens, and for several 
ages, even in Pagan Rome, was thought impious 
and detestable ; for Numa, we find, prohibited it 
to the old Romans, nor would suffer any images 
in their temples; which constitution they ob- 
served religiously, says Plutarch, for the first 
hundred and seventy years of the city. But as 
image worship was thought abominable even 
by some Pagan princes, so by some of the Chris- 
tian emperors it was forbidden on pain of death : 
not because these images were the representa- 
tions of demons, or false gods, but because they 
were vain senseless idols, the work of men's 
hands, and for that reason unworthy of any ho- 
nor : and all the instances and overt acts of such 
worship described, condemned by them, are ex- 
actly the same with what the papists practice at 
this day, viz., lighting up candles ; burning in- 
cense ; hanging up garlands, &c, as may be 
seen in the law of Theodosius before mentioned ; 
which confiscates that house or land, where any 
such act of Gentile superstition had been com- 
mitted. These princes, who were influenced, 
we may suppose, in their constitutions of this 
sort, by the advice of their bishops, did not think 
Paganism abolished till the adoration of images 
was utterly extirpated ; which was reckoned 
always the principal of those Gentile rites, that, 
agreeably to the sense of the purest ages of 
Christianity, are never mentioned in the impe- 
rial laws, without the epithets of profane, dam- 
nable, impious, &c. 



WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 61 

What opinion then can we have of the pre- 
sent practice of the church of Rome, but that by 
a change only of name, they have found means 
to retain the thing; and by substituting their 
saints in the place of the old demigods, have 
but set up idols of their own, instead of those of 
their forefathers? In which it is hard to say, 
whether their assurance, or their address is more 
to be admired, who have the face to make that 
the principal part of Christian worship, which 
the first Christians looked upon as the most 
criminal part even of Paganism, and have found 
means to extract gain and great revenues out of 
a practice, which, in primitive times, would have 
cost a man both life and estate. 

But our notion of the idolatry of modern Rome 
will be much heightened still and confirmed, as 
oft as we follow them into those temples, and to 
those very altars, which were built originally 
by their heathen ancestors, the old Romans, to 
the honor of their pagan deities ; where we shall 
hardly see any other alteration, than the shrine 
of some old hero filled by the meaner statue of 
some modern saint. Nay, they have not always, 
as I am well informed, given themselves the 
trouble of making even this change, but have 
been content sometimes to take up with the old 
image, just as they found it, after baptizing it 
only, as it were, or consecrating it anew, by the 
imposition of a Christian name. This their an- 
tiquaries do not scruple to put strangers in mind 
of, in showing their churches ; and it was, I 
think, in that of St. Agnes, where they showed 
^"6 



62 TOPERY AND PAGANISM. 

me an antique statue of a young Bacchus, which, 
with a new name, and some little change of dra- 
pery, stands now worshipped under the title of 
a female saint. 

Tully reproaches Clodius, for having publicly 
dedicated the statue of a common strumpet, un- 
der the name and title of the goddess Liberty ; a 
practice still frequent with the present Romans, 
who have scarce a fine image or picture of a fe- 
male saint, which is not said to have been de- 
signed originally by the sculptor or painter for 
the representation of his own mistress ; and 
"who dares," may we say, ironically, with the 
old Roman, to u violate such a goddess as this ; 
the statue of a whore ?"* 

The noblest heathen temple now remaining 
in the world, is the Pantheon or rotunda, which, 
as the inscription! over the portico informs us, 
having been impiously dedicated of old, by 
Agrippa, to Jove and all the gods, was piously 
reconsecrated by pope Boniface the fourth, to 
the blessed Virgin and all the saints. With this 
single alteration, it serves as exactly for all the 

* Hanc Deam quisquam violare audeat, imaginem meretri- 
cis 1 Cic. pro Dom. 43. 

t PANTHEON, &c. 

AB AGRIPPA AUGUSTI GENERO 
IMPIE JOVI, CETERISQUE MENDAC1BUS DIIS 

A BONIFACIO IIII. P0NT1FICE 

DEIPAR2E ET S. S. CHRISTI MARTYRIBUS PIE 

DICATUM, 

Ac. 

Translation.— THE PANTHEON, &c— By Agrippa, the 
son-in-law of Augustus, impiously dedicated to Jove, and other 
false gods. By pope Boniface I V. piously dedicated to the mother 
of God, and to the holy saints and martyrs of Christ, &c— [D .] 



WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 63 

purposes of the Popish, as it did for the Pagan 
worship, for which it was built. For as in the 
old temple, every one might find the god of his 
country, and address himself to that deity whose 
religion he was most devoted to ; so it is the 
same thing now; every one chooses the patron 
whom he likes best ; and one may see here dif- 
ferent services going on at the same time, at 
different altars, with distinct congregations 
around them, just as the inclinations of the 
people lead them to the worship of this or that 
particular saint. 

And what better title can the new demigods 
show to the adoration now paid to them, than 
the old ones, whose shrines they have usurped? 
Or how comes it to be less criminal to worship 
images, erected by the Pope, than those which 
Agrippa,or that which Nebuchadnezzar set up? 
If there be any real difference, most people, I 
dare say, will be apt to determine in favor of the 
old possessors ; for those heroes of antiquity 
were raised up into gods, and received divine 
honors, for some signal benefits, of which they 
had been the authors to mankind ; as the inven- 
tion of arts and sciences ; or of something highly 
useful and necessary to life :* whereas of the 
Romish saints, it is certain that many of them 
were never heard of, but in their own legends 
or fabulous histories : and many more, instead 

* Imitantem Herculem ilium, quern hominum fama, bene- 
ficiorum memor, in concilium ccelestium collocavit. Cicero 
Off. iii. 299. 

Imitating that Hercules whom fame, in memory of his ben- 
efits hath placed in the council of the gods.— [D.] 



64 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

of any services done to mankind, owe all the 
honors now paid to them, to their vices, or their 
errors ; whose merit, like that of Demetrius in 
the Acts,* was their skill of raising rebellions in 
defence of an idol, and throwing kingdoms into 
convulsions, for the sake of some gainful im- 
posture. 

And as it is in the Pantheon, it is just the 
same in all the other heathen temples, that still 
remain in Rome; they have only pulled down 
one idol to set up another; and changed rather 
the name, than the object of their worship. 
Thus the little temple of Vesta, near the Tiber, 
mentioned by Horace, is now possessed by the 
Madonna of the Sun ; that of Fortuna Virilis, 
by Mary the Egyptian ; that of Saturn, (where 
the public treasure was anciently kept,) by St. 
Adrian ; that of Romulus and Remus in the 
Via Sacra, by two other brothers, Cosmas and 
Damianus ; that of Antonine the godly, by 
Laurence the saint; but for my part, I should 
sooner be tempted to prostrate myself before the 
statue of a Romulus or an Antonine, than that 
of Laurence or a Damian ; and give divine hon- 
ors rather, with Pagan Rome, to the founders of 
empires, than with Popish Rome, to the found- 
ers of monasteries. 

At the foot of Mount Palatine, in the way be- 
tween the forum of Circus Maximus, on the very 
spot where Romulus was believed to have been 
suckled by the wolf, there stands another little 
round temple, dedicated to him in the early times 

* Acts xix. 23. 



WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 65 

of the republic, into which, for the present ele- 
vation of the soil without, we now descend by 
a great number of steps. It is mentioned by 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who says, that in 
his time there stood in it a brazen statue of an- 
tique work, of the wolf giving suck to the infant 
brothers ;* which is thought by many to be the 
same which is still preserved and shown in the 
capitol; though I take this rather, which now 
remains, to have been another of the same kind, 
that stood originally in the capitol, and is men- 
tioned by Cicero to have been there struck with 
lightning:! of which it retains to this day, the 
evident marks in one of its hinder legs. It is, 
however, to one or the other of these celebrated 
statues, that Virgil, as Servius assures us, alludes 
in that elegant description : 

Geminos huic ubera circum 



Ludere pendentes pueros et lambere matrem 
Impavidos : Illam tereti cervice reflexam 
M ulcere alternos, et fingere corpora lingua. 

Virg. Mn. viii. 631. 

"The martial twins beneath their mother lay, 
And hanging on her dugs, with wanton play, 
Securely sucked ; whilst she reclines her head 
To lick their tender limbs, and form them as they fed." 

But to return to my story, from the tradition 
of the wonderful escape which Romulus had in 
this very place, when exposed in his infancy to 
perish in the Tiber; as soon as he came to be a 
god, he was looked upon as singularly propi- 

* Dion. Hal. L. i. 64. Edit. Hudson. 
t Cicero Orat. in Catil. III. 4. 
6* 



66 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

tious to the health and safety of young children : 
from which notion it became a practice for nurs- 
es and mothers, to present their sickly infants 
before his shrine in this little temple, in confi- 
dence of a cure or relief by his favor. Now when 
this temple was converted afterwards into a 
church, lest any piece of superstition should be 
lost, or the people think themselves sufferers by 
the change, in losing the benefit of such a pro- 
tection for their children ; care was taken to 
find out in the place of the heathen god a Chris- 
tian saint, who had been exposed too in his in- 
fancy, and found by chance like Romulus; and 
for the same reason, might be presumed to be 
just as fond of children as their old deity had 
been. 

Thus the worship paid to Romulus being now 
transferred to Theodorus, the old superstition 
still subsists, and the custom of presenting chil- 
dren at this shrine continues to this day without 
intermission; of which I myself have been a 
witness, having seen, as oft as I looked into this 
church, ten or a dozen women decently dressed, 
each with a child in her lap, sitting with silent 
reverence before the altar of the saint, in expec- 
tation of his miraculous influence on the health 
of the infant. 

In consecrating these heathen temples to the 
Popish worship, that the change might be the 
less offensive, and the old superstition as little 
shocked as possible, they generally observed 
some resemblance of quality and character in 
the saint whom they substituted to the old deity. 



WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 67 

" If, in converting the profane worship of the 
Gentiles," says the describer of modern Rome, 
"to the pure and sacred worship of the church, 
the faithful use to follow some use and propor- 
tion, they have certainly hit upon it here, in de- 
dicating to the Madonna, or holy Virgin, the tem- 
ple formerly sacred to the Bona Dea, or good 
goddess."* But they have more frequently on 
these occasions had regard rather to a simili- 
tude of name between the old and new idol. 
Thus in a place formerly sacred to Apollo, there 
now stands the church of Apollinaris ; built 
there, as they tell us, " that the profane name of 
that deity might be converted into the glorious 
name of this martyr :"t and where there ancient- 
ly stood a temple of Mars, they have erected a 
church to Martina, with this inscription: 

MARTYRII GESTANS VIRGO MARTINA CORONAM, 
EJECTO HINC MARTIS NUMINE, TEMPLA TENET. 

" Mars hence expelled ; Martina, martyr'd maid, 
Claims now the worship, which to him was paid." 

In another place, I have taken notice of an 
altar erected to St. Baccho ; and in their stories 
of their saints, have observed the names of Q,ui- 
rinus, Romula and Redempta, Concordia, Nym- 
pha, Mercurius; which, though they may, for 

* Si nel revoltare il profano culfo de Gentili nel sacro e vero, 
osservarono i fedeli qualche proportione, qui la ritrovarono as- 
sai conveniente nel dedicare a Maria Ver^ine un Tempio, 
ch'cra della bona dea. Rom. Mod. Gior. ii. Rion. di Ripa x. 

t La Chiesa di S. Apollinari fu fabbricata in questo luogo 
d' Christian] ; affinche il profano nome d'Apolline fusse con- 
vert it o nel santo nome di questo glorioso Marti re. Ibid. (Ho. 
iii. 21. 






68 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

any thing that I know, have been the genuine 
names of Christian martyrs, yet cannot but give 
occasion to suspect, that some of them at least 
have been formed out of a corruption of the old 
names ; and that the adding of a modern termi- 
nation, or Italianizing the old name of a deity, 
has given existence to some of their present 
saints. 

Thus the corruption of the word Soracte (the 
old name of a mountain mentioned by Horace* 
in sight of Rome) has, according to Mr. Addi- 
son, added one saint to the Roman calendar ; 
being now softened,f because it begins with an 
S, into St. Oraste ; in whose honor a monas- 
tery is founded on the place : a change very 
natural, if we consider that the title of saint is 
never written by the Italians at length, but ex- 
pressed commonly by the single letter S., as 
S. Oracle: and thus this holy mountain stands 
now under the protection of a patron, whose be- 
ing and power is just as imaginary, as that of 
its old guardian Apollo : 

Sancti custos Soractis Apollo. Virg. ^En. ix. 
"Apollo the guardian of sacred Soracte." 

No suspicion of this kind will appear extrav- 
agant to those who are at all acquainted with 
the history of Popery ; which abounds with in- 
stances of the grossest forgeries both of saints 
and relics, which, to the scandal of many even 

* Hor. Carm. L. i. 9. 

t Addison's Travels from Pesaro, &c. to Rome. 



WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 69 

among themselves,* have been imposed for 
genuine on the poor ignorant people. It is cer- 
tain, that in the earlier ages of Christianity, the 
Christians often made free with the sepulchral 
stonesof heathen monuments, which being ready- 
cut to their own hands, they converted to their 
own use ; and turning downwards the side on 
which the old epitaph was engraved, used either 
to inscribe a new one on the other side, or leave 
it perhaps without any inscription at all, as they 
are often found in the catacombs of Rome.t 
Now this one custom has frequently been the 
occasion of ascribing martyrdom and saintship 
to persons and names of mere Pagans. 

Mabillon gives a remarkable instance of it in 
an old stone, found on the grave of a Christian, 
with this inscription : 

D. M. 

IVLIA EVODIA 

FILIA FECIT 

MATRI.l 

And because, in the same grave, there was found 
likewise a glass vial, or lachrymatory vessel, 
tinged with a reddish color, which they call 
blood, and look upon as a certain proof of mar- 
tyrdom, this Julia Evodia, though undoubtedly 
a heathen, was presently adopted both for saint 
and martyr, on the authority of an inscription, 
that appears evidently to have been one of those 

* Mabill. Iter. Ital. p. 225. 
t Aringhus Rom. Subt. L. iii. c. 22. 

t Translation.— D. M. (Diis Manibus). To the Manes. Julia 
Evodia, the daughter, hath erected this to her mother.— [D-j 






70 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

above mentioned, and borrowed from a heathen 
sepulchre. But whatever the party there buried 
might have been, whether heathen or Christian, 
it is certain, however, that it could not be Evodia 
herself, but her mother only, whose name is not 
there signified. 

The same author mentions some original pa- 
pers, which he found in the Barbarine library, 
giving a pleasant account of a negotiation be- 
tween the Spaniards and pope Urban the eighth, 
in relation to this very subject.* The Spaniards, 
it seems, have a saint, held in great reverence in 
some parts of Spain, called Viar ; for the farther 
encouragement of whose worship they solicited 
the Pope to grant some special indulgences to 
his altars; and upon the Pope's desiring to be 
better acquainted first with his character, and 
the proofs which they had of his saintship, they 
produced a stone with these antique letters, S. 
YIAR., which the antiquaries readily saw to be 
a small fragment of some old Roman inscription 
in memory of one who had been PrcefectuS 
YIARum. or overseer of the highways. 

But we have in England an instance still 
more ridiculous, of a fictitious saintship, in the 
case of a certain saint called Amphibolus ; who, 

* Alterum notatu dignum, quod Urbanus ab Hispanis qui- 
busdam interpellatus de concedendis indulgentiis ob cultum 
Sancti, cui nomen VIAR, &c. allatus est lapis in quo hae literae 
reiiquae erant S. VIAR, &c. Vid. Mabill. Iter, Ital. p. 145. 

Another thing worthy of mention is that pope Urban, being 
applied to by certain persons from Spain concerning granting 
indulgences for the worship of a saint, named VIAR, &a, the 
stone was brought, in which these letters remained, S. VIAR, 
&c— Mabill&n— [D.] 



WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 71 

according to our monkish historians, was bishop 
of the Isle of Man. and fellow martyr and disci- 
ple of St. Alban : yet the learned bishop Usher 
has given good reasons to convince us, that he 
owes the honor of his saintship to a mistaken 
passage in the old acts or legends of St. Alban:* 
where the Amphibolus mentioned, and since re- 
verenced as a saint and martyr, was nothing 
more than the cloak, which Alban happened to 
have at the time of his execution ; being a word 
derived from the Greek, and signifying a rough 
shaggy cloak, which ecclesiastical persons usu- 
ally wore in that age. 

They pretend to show us here at Rome, two 
original impressions of our Saviour's face, 
on two different handkerchiefs; the one sent a 
present by himself to Agbarus prince of Edessa, 
who by letter had desired a picture of him ; the 
other, given by him at the time of his execution, 
to a saint, or holy woman, named Veronica, 
upon a handkerchief which she had lent him to 
wipe his face on that occasion : both which 
handkerchiefs are still preserved, as they affirm,t 
and now kept with the utmost reverence ; the 
first in St. Silvester's church ; the second in St. 
Peter's; where, in honor of this sacred relic, 
there is a fine altar built by pope Urban the 

* Usser. de Britan. Eccles. primord. c. xiv. p. 539. 

t Vid. Aringh. Rom. Subtcrran. Tom. ii. p. 453. 

There is a prayer in their books of offices, ordered by the 
rubric to be addressed to this sacred and miraculous picture, 
in the following terms — Conduct us, O thou blessed figure, to 
our proper home, where we may behold the pure face of Christ. 
See Conform, ofAnc. and Mod. Ceremonies, p. 158. 



72 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

eighth, with the statue of Veronica herself, with 
the following inscription : 

SALVATORIS IMAGINEM VERONICJE 

SVDARIO EXCEPTAM 

VT LOCI MAIESTAS DECENTER 

CVSTODIRET URBANVS VIII. 

PONT. MAX. 

MARMOREVM SIGNVM 

ET ALTARE ADDIDIT CONDITORIVM 

EXTRVXIT ET ORNAVIT.* 

But notwithstanding the authority of this 
Pope, and his inscription, this VERONICA, as 
one of their best authors has shovvn,t like Am- 
phibolus, before mentioned, was not any real 
person, but the name given to the picture itself 
by the old writers who mention it; being formed 
by blundering and confounding the words VE- 
RA ICON, or true image, the title inscribed per- 
haps, or given originally to the handkerchief by 
the first contrivers of the imposture. 

These stories however, as fabulous and child- 
ish as they appear to men of sense, are yet urged 
by grave authors in defence of their image wor- 
ship, as certain proofs of its divine origin, and 
sufficient to confound all the impious opposers 
of it.t 

* Translation. — Pope Urban VIII., in order that the sanc- 
tity of the spot might suitably preserve the picture of the Sa- 
viour, received on the handkerchief of Veronica, hath erected 
and adorned this marble statue, and added the altar as a reposi- 
tory thereof.— [D.] 

t Mabill. Iter. Ital, p. 88. 

t Aringhus Rom. Subt. T. ii. L. v. c. 4, and Rom. Mod. 
Gior. i. Rion. di Bor. 



WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 73 

I shall add nothing more on this article, than 
that whatever worship was paid by the ancients 
to their heroes or inferior deities, the Romanists 
now pay the same to their saints and martyrs; 
as their own inscriptions plainly declare ; which, 
like those mentioned above of St. Martina, and 
the Pantheon, generally signify that the honors 
which of old had been impiously given in that 
place to the false god, are now piously and right- 
ly transferred to the Christian saint : or, as one 
of their celebrated poets expresses himself in 
regard to St. George : 

Ut Martem Latii, sic nos Te, Dive Georgi, 
Nunc colimus, &c. Mantuan. 

" As Mars, our fathers once adored, so now 
To thee, O George, we humbly prostrate bow." 

And every where through Italy, one sees their 
sacred inscriptions speaking the pure language 
of Paganism, and ascribing the same powers, 
characters and attributes, to their saints, which 
had formerly been ascribed to the heathen gods, 
as the few here exhibited will evince. 

Popish Inscription. (1) 

MARIA ET FRANCISCE 

TVTELARES MEL* 

Pagan Inscription. (1) 

MERCVRIO ET MINERVAE 

DIIS TVTELARlB.f 

* Translation of Popish Inscription. — Mary and Francis, 
my tutelar saints. — [D,J 

t Pagan Inscription.— To Mercury and Minerva, my tutelar 

R0d8.-[D.] 

7 



74 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

Popish Inscription. (2) 

DIVO EVSTORGIO 

QVI HV1C TEMPLO 

PRAESIDET.* 

Pagan Inscription. (2) 

DII QVI HV1C TEMPLO 

PRAESIDENT.t 

Popish Inscription. (3) 

DIVIS 

PRAESTITIBVS IVVANT1BVS 

GEORGIO STEPHANOQVE 

CVM DEO OPT. MAX.! 

Pagrn Inscription. (3) 

DIIS. 

DEABVS. 

QVE. CVM 

IOVE.§ 

Boldonius censures the author of the last in- 
scription, for the absurdity of putting the saints 
before God himself; and imitating too closely 
the ancient inscription, which I have set against 
it, where the same impropriety is committed in 
regard to Jupiter. II 

* Translation of Popish Inscription. — To St. Eustorgius, . 
who presides over this temple. — [D.] 

t Pagan Inscription.— The gods who preside over this tern- 
ple.-{D.] 

t Popish Inscription.— To the guardian presiding saints. 
George and Stephen, with the Supreme God. — [D.] 

§ Pagan Inscription.— To the gods and goddesses, with Ju- 
piter.— [D.] 

II It has been thought sufficient to insert in the text the 
above six, out of the eleven inscriptions given by Dr. Middle- 
ton, with translations of them in notes, as instances of the 
striking parallelism that exists between these Popish and Pa- 
gan inscriptions.— [D.] 



WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 75 

As to that celebrated act of Popish idolatry, 
the adoration of the host, I must confess that I 
cannot find the least resemblance of it in any 
part of the Pagan worship ; and as often as I 
have been standing by at mass, and seen the 
whole congregation prostrate on the ground, in 
the humblest posture of adoring, at the elevation 
of this consecrated piece of bread, I could not 
help reflecting on a passage of Tully, where, 
speaking of the absurdity of the heathen in the 
choice of their gods : "But was any man," says 
he, "ever so mad, as to take that which he feeds 
upon, for a god ?"* This was an extravagance 
reserved for Popery alone ; and what an old 
Roman could not but think too gross even for 
Egyptian idolatry to swallow, is now become 
the principal part of worship, and the distin- 
guishing article of faith, in the creed of modern 
Rome. 

* Sed ecquem tarn amentem esse putas, qui illud, quo ves- 
catur. Deum credat esse 1 Cic de Ned. Deor. iii. 



CHAPTER V. 



K0AD GODS AND SAINTS. 



But their temples are not the only places 
where we see the proofs and overt acts of their 
superstition. The whole face of the country 
has the visible characters of Paganism upon it; 
and wherever we look about us, we cannot but 
find, as St. Paul did in Athens,* clear evidence of 
its being possessed by a superstitious and idola- 
trous people. 

The old Romans, we know, had their gods, 
who presided peculiarly over the roads, streets 
and highways, called Viales, Semitales, Compi- 
tales ; whose little temples or altars decked with 
flowers, or whose statues at least, coarsely carved 
of wood or stone, were placed at convenient dis- 
tances in the public ways, for the benefit of trav- 
ellers, who used to step aside to pay their devo- 
tions to these rural shrines, and beg a prosperous 
journey and safety in their travels.! Now this 

* Acts xvii 17. 

flnvoco voSj Lares viales, ut me bene juvetis. Plaul. 
I invoke you, O ye road-gods, that ye render me good as- 
sistance.— [D.] 



ROAD GODS. 77 

custom prevails still so generally in all Popish 
countries, but especially in Italy, that one can 
see no other difference between the old and pre- 
sent superstition, than that of changing the 
name of the deity, and christening as it were the 
old Hecate in triviis, by the new name of Maria 
in trivio ; by which title, I have observed one of 
their churches dedicated in this city : and as the 
heathens used to paint over the ordinary statues 
of their gods, with red or some such gay color, 
so I have oft observed the coarse images of these 
saints so daubed over with a gaudy red, as to 
resemble exactly the description of the god Pan 
in Virgil : 

Sanguineis ebuli baccis minioque rubentum.* Eel. x. 

In passing along the road, it is common to see 
travellers on their knees before these rustic al- 
tars ; which none ever presume to approach 
without some act of reverence ; and those who 
are most in haste, or at a distance, are sure to 
pull off their hats at least, in token of respect: 
and 1 took notice, that our postillions used to 
look back upon us, to see how we behaved on 
such occasions, and seemed surprised at our 
passing so negligently before places esteemed so 
sacred. 

But besides these images and altars, there are 
frequently erected on the road huge wooden 
crosses, dressed out with flowers, and hung 
round with the trifling offerings of the country 

* " Stained with the purple berries of the dwarf elder, and 
with vermilion." — [D.] 

7* 



78 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

people ; which always put me in mind of the 
superstitious veneration, which the heathens 
used to pay to some old trunks of trees or posts, 
set up in the highways, which they held sacred, 
or of that venerable oak in Ovid, covered with 
garlands and votive offerings: 

Stabat in his ingens annosorobore quercus; 
Una nemus: Vittae mediam, memoresque tabellae 
Sertaque cingebant, voti argumenta potentis. Met. viii. 

"Rev'rend with age, a stately oak there stood, 
Its branches widely stretched, itself a wood, 
With ribbands, garlands, pictures cover'd o'er, 
The fruits of pious vows from rich and poor." 

This description of the Pagan oak puts me in 
mind of a story that I have met with here, of a 
Popish oak very like it, viz., how a certain per- 
son, devoted to the worship of the Virgin, hung 
up a picture of her in an oak that he had in his 
vineyard, which grew so famous for its miracles, 
that the oak soon became covered with votive 
offerings, and rich presents from different coun- 
tries, so as to furnish a fund at last for the build- 
ing of a great church to the miraculous picture ; 
which now stands dedicated in this city, under 
the title of St. Mary of the Oak. 

But what gave me still the greater notion of 
the superstition of these countries, was to see 
those little oratories, or rural shrines, sometimes 
placed under the cover of a tree or grove ; agree- 
ably to the descriptions of the old idolatry, in 
the sacred as well as profane writers ; or more 
generally raised on some eminence, or, in the 
phrase of Scripture, on high places ; the constant 



ROAD GODS. 79 

scene of idolatrous worship in all ages ; it being 
an universal opinion among the heathens, that 
the gods in a peculiar manner loved to reside 
on eminences or tops of mountains : which Pa- 
gan notion prevails still so generally with the 
Papists, that there is hardly a rock or precipice, 
how dreadful or difficult soever of access, that 
has not an oratory, or altar, or crucifix at least, 
planted on the top of it. 

Among the rugged mountains of the Alps in 
Savoy, very near to a little town called Modana, 
there stands on the top of a rock, a chapel, with 
a miraculous image of our lady, which is visited 
with great devotion by the people, and some- 
times, we were told, by the king himself ; being 
famous, it seems, for a miracle of a singular kind, 
viz., the restoring of dead-born children to life; 
but so far only, as to make them capable of bap- 
tism, after which they again expire: and our 
landlord assured me, that there was daily proof 
of the truth of this miracle, in children brought 
from all quarters to be presented before this 
shrine ; who never failed to show manifest to- 
kens of life, by stretching out their arms, or open- 
ing their eyes, or even sometimes making water 
whilst they were held by the priest in the pre- 
sence of the image. All which appeared so ri- 
diculous to a French gentleman, who was with 
me at the place, but had not heard the story 
from our landlord, that he looked upon it as a 
banter or fiction of my own, till I brought him 
to my author, who with his wife, as well as our 
Voiturins, very seriously testified the truth of it ; 



80 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

and added farther, that when the French army 
passed that way in the last war, they were so 
impious, as to throw down this sacred image to 
the bottom of a vast precipice hard by it, which, 
though of wood only, was found below entire 
and unhurt by the fall, and so replaced in its 
shrine, with greater honor than ever, by the at- 
testation of this new miracle. 

On the top of Mount Senis, the highest moun- 
tain of the Alps, in the same passage of Savoy, 
covered with perpetual snow, they have another 
chapel, in which they perform divine service 
once a year, in the month of August ; and some- 
times, as our guides informed us, to the destruc- 
tion of the whole congregation, by the accident 
of a sudden tempest in a place so elevated and 
exposed. And this surely comes up to the de- 
scription of that worship which the Jews were 
commanded to extirpate from the face of the 
earth: ; 'Ye shall utterly destroy the places 
wherein the nations served their gods, upon the 
high mountains and upon the hills, and under 
every green tree : and ye shall overthrow their 
altars, break their pillars, burn their groves, and 
hew down the graven images of their gods."* 

When we enter their towns, the case is still 
the same, as it was in the country; we find ev- 
ery where the same marks of idolatry, and the 
same reasons to make us fancy that we are still 
treading Pagan ground ; whilst at every corner 
we see images and altars, with lamps or candles 
burning before them; exactly answering to the 
* Deut. xii. 2, 3. 



ROAD GODS. 81 

descriptions of the ancient writers ; and to what 
Tertullian reproaches the heathens with, that 
their streets, their markets, their baths, were not 
without an idol.* 

i *Tertul. De Spectac. c. viii. 



CHAPTER VI. 

RELIGIOUS PROCESSIONS. 



But above all, in the pomp and solemnity of 
their holy days, and especially their religious 
processions, we see the genuine remains of hea- 
thenism, and proof enough to convince us, that 
this is still the same Rome, which old Numa 
first tamed and civilized by the arts of religion : 
who, as Plutarch says, "by the institution of 
supplications and processions to the gods, which 
inspire reverence, whilst they give pleasure to 
the spectators, and by pretended miracles and 
divine apparitions, reduced the fierce spirits of 
his subjects under the power of superstition.'** 

The descriptions of the religious pomps and 
processions of the heathens come so near to 
what we see on every festival of the Virgin or 
other Romish saint, that one can hardly help 
thinking these Popish ones to be still regulated 
by the old ceremonial of Pagan Rome. At these 
solemnities "the chief magistrate used frequently 
to assist in robes of ceremony ; attended by the 

* Plutarch in Numa. 



RELIGIOUS PROCESSIONS. 83 

priests in surplices, with wax candles in their 
hands, carrying upon a pageant or thensa the 
images of their gods, dressed out in their best 
clothes; these were usually followed by the 
principal youth of the place, in white linen vest- 
ments or surplices, singing hymns in honor of 
the god whose festival they were celebrating, 
accompanied by crowds of all sorts that were in- 
itiated in the same religion, all with flambeaux 
or wax candles in their hands.'** This is the ac- 
count which Apuleius and other authors give us 
of a Pagan procession ; and 1 may appeal to all 
who have been abroad, whether it might not 
pass quite as well for the description of a Popish 
one. 

Monsieur Tournefort, in his travels through 
Greece, reflects upon the Greek church for hav- 
ing retained and taken into their present worship 
many of the old rites of heathenism, and partic- 
ularly that of carrying and dancing about the 
images of the saints, in their processions, to 
singing and musict The reflection is full as ap- 
plicable to his own, as it is to the Greek church ; 
and the practice itself so far from giving scandal 
in Italy, that the learned publisher of the Flo- 
rentine inscriptions takes occasion to show the 

* Antistites sacrorum candido linteamine— ad usque vesti- 
gia strictim injecti. Deum proferebant insignes exuvias, quo- 
rum primus lucernam pracmicantem claro porrigebat lumine 
&c. Eas amoenus lectissimae juventutis, veste nivea praenitens 
sequebatur chorus, carmen venustum iterantes. Magnus prae- 
terea sexus utriusque numerus, lucemis, taedis, cereis, &c. 
Apul. ibid. Vid. Pausan. ii. 7. 

t Tournefort, Lit. iii. 44. 



84 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

conformity between them and the heathens, 
from this very instance of carrying about the 
pictures of their saints, as the Pagans did those 
of their gods, in their sacred processions.* 

In one of these processions, made lately to 
St. Peter's in the time of Lent, I saw that ridicu- 
lous penance of the flagellantes, or self-whip- 
pcrsj who march with whips in their hands, and 
lash themselves as they go along, on the bare 
back, till it is all covered with blood ; in the 
same manner as the fanatical priests of Bellona 
or the Syrian goddess, as well as the votaries of 
Isis, used to slash and cut themselves of old, in 
order to please the goddess, by the sacrifice of 
their own blood : which mad piece of discipline 
we find frequently mentioned, and as oft ridi- 
culed by the ancient writers. 

But they have another exercise of the same 
kind, and in the same season of Lent which, 
under the notion of penance, is still a more ab- 
surd mockery of all religion : when on a certain 
day, appointed annually for this discipline, men 
of all conditions assemble themselves towards 
the evening, in one of the churches of the city ; 
where whips or lashes made of cords are pro- 
vided, and distributed to every person present : 
and after they are all served, and a short office 
of devotion performed; the candles being put 
out, upon the warning of a little bell, the whole 
company begin presently to strip, and try the 
force of these whips on their own backs, for the 
space of near an hour : during all which time, 

* Inscript. Antig. Flor. p. 377. 






SELF-WHIPPERS. 85 



the church becomes, as it were, the proper im- 
age of hell : where nothing is heard but the 
noise of lashes and chains, mixed with the 
groans of these self-tormentors; till satiated 
with their exercise, they are content to put on 
their clothes, and the candles being lighted again 
upon the tinkling of a second bell, they all ap- 
pear iu their proper dress. 

Seneca, alluding to the very same effects of 
fanaticism in Pagan Rome, says : " So great is 
the force of it on disordered minds, that they try 
to appease the gods by such methods, as an en- 
raged man would hardly take to revenge him- 
self. But, if there be any gods who desire to be 
worshipped after this manner, they do not de- 
serve to be worshipped at all: since the very 
worst of tyrants, though they have sometimes 
torn a tortured people's limbs, yet have never 
commanded men to torture themselves."* 

But there is no occasion to imagine, that all 
the blood, which seems to flow on these occa- 
sions, really comes from the backs of these 
bigots : for it is probable that, like their frantic 
predecessors, they may use some craft, as well 
as zeal, in this their fury ; and I cannot but 
think, that there was a great deal of justice in 
that edict of the emperor Commodus, with regard 
to these Bellonarii, or whippers of antiquity, 
though it is usually imputed to his cruelty, when 

* Tantus est perturbatae mentis furor, ut sic Dii placentur, 
quemadmodum ne homines quidem sasviunt. Dii autem nullo 
aebent coli genere, si et hoc volunt. Teterrimi tyranni lacera- 
verunt aliquorum membra; ncminem sua lacerare jusserunt. 
Seneca Fragm, apud Lipsii Elect. L. ii. 18. 



POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

he commanded, that they should not be suf- 
fered to impose upon the spectators, but be 
obliged to cut and slash themselves in good 
earnest.* 

* Bellonae servientes vere exsecare brachiura praecepit, stu- 
dio crudelitatis. Lamprid.in Commodo, 9. 

From delight in cruelty, he commanded the worshippers of 
Bellona to cut their arms in reality .-^D.] 



CHAPTER VII. 

FALSE MIRACLES. 

If I had leisure to examine the pretended 
miracles, and pious frauds of the Romish 
church, I should be able to trace them all from 
the same source of Paganism, and find that the 
priests of new Rome are not degenerated from 
their predecessors, in the art of forging these 
holy impostures ; which, as Livy observes of old 
Rome, "were always multiplied in proportion 
to the credulity and disposition of the poor peo- 
ple to swallow them."* 

In the early times of the republic, in the war 
with the Latins, the gods Castor and Pollux are 
said to have appeared on white horses in the 
Roman army, which by their assistance gained 
a complete victory: in memory of which, the 
general Posthumius vowed and built a temple 
publicly to those deities ; and for a proof of the 
fact, there was shown, we find, in Cicero's time, 
the mark of the horses' hoofs on a rock at Rc- 
gillum, where they first appeared.! 

* Quae quo magis credebant simplices ct religiosi homines 
eo plura nunciabantur. Liv. L. xxiv. 10. 
t Cicero de Nat. Deor. L. iii. 5. 



88 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

Now this miracle, with many others, that I 
could mention of the same kind, has, I dare say, 
as authentic an attestation, as any which the 
Papists can produce : — the decree of a senate to 
confirm it; a temple erected in consequence of 
it; visible marks of the fact on the spot where 
it was transacted ; — and all this supported by the 
concurrent testimony of the best authors of an- 
tiquity ; amongst whom Dionysius of Halicar- 
nassus says,* that there were subsisting in his 
time at Rome many evident proofs of its reality, 
besides a yearly festival, with a solemn sacrifice 
and procession in memory of it : yet for all this, 
these stories were but the jest of men of sense, 
even in the times of heathenism; and seem so 
extravagant to us now, that we wonder how 
there could ever be any so simple as to believe 
them. 

What better opinion then can we have of all 
those of the same stamp in the Popish legends, 
which they have plainly built on this founda- 
tion, and copied from this very original ? Not 
content with barely copying, they seldom fail to 
improve the old story, with some additional for- 
gery and invention of their own. Thus in the 
present case, instead of two persons on white 
horses, they take care to introduce three ; and 
not only on white horses, but at the head of 
white armies; as in an old history of the holy 
wars, written by a pretended eye-witness, and 
published by Mabillon, it is solemnly affirmed of 



* Dion. Halic. L. vi. p. 337. Edit. Hudson. 






FALSE MIRACLES. 89 

St. George, Demetrius, and Theodorus.* They 
show us too in several parts of Italy, the marks 
of hands and feet on rocks and stories, said to 
have been effected miraculously by the appari- 
tion of some saint or angel on the spot : just as 
the impression of the feet of Hercules was shown 
of old on a stone in Scythia,t exactly resembling 
the footsteps of a man. And they have also 
many churches and public monuments^ erected, 
in testimony of such miracles, viz., of saints and 
angels fighting visibly for them in their battles ; 
which though al ways as ridiculous as that above 
mentioned, are not yet supported by half so good 
evidence of their reality. § 

" The religion of Ceres of Enna was cele- 
brated, as Cicero informs us, with a wonderful 
devotion, both in public and private, through all 
Sicily : for her presence and divinity had been 
frequently manifested to them by numerous pro- 

* Vid. Bell. Sac. Hist, in Mabill. Iter. Ital. T. i. Par. ii. p. 
138, 155. 

t Herodot. L. iv. p. 4, 251. Edit. Lond. 

X There is an altar of marble in St, Peter's, one of the great- 
est pieces of modern sculpture, representing in figures as large 
as life, the story of Attila king of the Huns, who in full march 
towards Rome with a victorious army, in order to pillage it, 
was frighted and driven back by the apparition of an angel, in 
the time of pope Leo the first. 

The castle and church of St. Angelo have their title from 
the apparition of an angel over the place, in the time of Gregory 
the great. Rom. Moder. Glorn. i. Rion. cli. Borgo i. 

§ Divum Jacobum nationis Hispanicse, qui armatus saepe 
visus in sublime praiire ac protegeie acies Hispanorum, no- 
bilesque iis victorias in sacris bellis conciliare. Boldonni Epi- 
graph. L. ii. p. 349. 

Saint James of the Spanish nation, who was often seen in 
the air, to advance before and protect the army of the Spaniards, 
and to grant them notable victories in the holy wars.— {D.] 
8* 



90 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

digies, and many people had received immediate 
help from her in their utmost distress. Her im- 
age therefore in that temple was held in such 
veneration, that whenever men beheld it. they 
fancied themselves beholding either Ceres her- 
self, or the figure of her at least, not made by 
human hands, but dropt down to them from 
heaven."* Now if in the place of Ceres of Enna, 
we should insert into this relation, our lady of 
Loretto, or of Impruneta, or any other miracu- 
lous image in Italy ; the very same account 
would suit as exactly with the history of the 
modern saint, as it is told by the present Romans, 
as it formerly did with that of Ceres, as it is trans- 
mitted to us by the ancients. And what else 
indeed are all their miraculous images, which 
we see in every great town, said to be made by 
angels, and sent to them from heaven,t but mere 

* Mira quaedam tota Sicilia privatim ac publice religio est 
Cereris Ennensis. Etenim multa ssepe prodigia vim ejus nu- 
menque declarant : multis same in difficillimis rebus praesens 
auxilium ejus oblatum est, &c. Cic. in Verr. iv. 49. 

Alterum autem Ennae (simulacrum Cereris) erat tale, ut ho- 
mines cum viderent, aut ipsam se videre Cererem, aut effigiem 
Cereris, non humana manu factam, sed caelo delapsam arbitra- 
rentur. lb. v. 7. 

t Sed quorsum hie Sancti Dominici imaginem, quae apud 
Surrianum in Calabria jugibus nunc miraculis praefulget, silen- 
tio obvolvimus? de Ccelo quippe, ut pio traditio est, haec pri- 
mum anno 1530 delata validissimum adversus impios lcono- 
clastas propugnaculum exhibet. Aring. Rom. Subter. L. v. c. 5. 

Wherefore do we hide in silence the image of Saint Do- 
minic, which at Surrianum in Calabria now shines, by perpet- 
ual miracles? For this imoge, brought down from heaven, as 
the pious tradition is, in 1530, affords a most mighty weapon 
against the impious Iconoclasts, or image breakers. — [D.] 
~ This Saint Dominic was the principal founder of the hor- 
rible and bloody Inquisition. 



FALSE MIRACLES. 91 

copies of the ancient fables, or the image of Di- 
ana dropped from the clouds ;* or the Palladium 
of Troy, which, according to old authors, was a 
wooden statue three cubits long, which fell from 
heaven. 

In one of their churches here, they show a 
picture of the Virgin, which, as their writers af- 
firm,t was brought down from heaven with 
great pomp, and after having hung awhile with 
surprising lustre in the air, in the sight of all the 
clergy and people of Rome, was delivered by 
angels into the hands of pope John the first, who 
marched out in solemn procession, in order to 
receive this celestial present. 

And is not this exactly of a piece with the old 
Pagan story of king Numa, when, in this same 
city, he issued from his palace, with priests and 
people after him, and with public prayer and 
solemn devotion received the ancile, or heavenly 
shield, which, in the presence of all the people 
of Rome, was sent down to him with much the 
same formality from the clouds ? And as that 
wise prince, for the security of his heavenly 
present, ordered several others to be made so 
exactly like it, that the original could not be 
distinguished ; so the Romish priests have thence 
taken the hint, to form, after each celestial pat- 
tern, a number of copies, so perfectly resembling 
each other, as to occasion endless squabbles 
among themselves about their several preten- 
sions to the divine original. 

* Acts xix. 35. 

t Vid. Rom. Modern. Giom. ii. Rion. di Ripa, c. xliii. 



92 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

The rod of Moses, with which he performed 
his miracles, is still preserved, as they pretend, 
and shown here with great devotion, in one of 
the principal churches : and just so the rod of 
Romulus, with which he performed his augu- 
ries, was preserved by the priests, as a sacred 
relic in old Rome, and kept with great reverence 
from being touched or handled by the people :* 
which rod too, like most of the Popish relics, 
had the testimony of a miracle in proof of its 
sanctity; for when the temple where it was 
kept, was burnt to the ground, it was found en- 
tire under the ashes, and untouched by the 
flames :t which same miracle has been borrowed 
and exactly copied by the present Romans, in 
many instances; particularly, in a miraculous 
image of our Saviour in St. John Lateran ; over 
which the flames, it seems, had no power, though 
the church itself has beentwicedestroyedbyfire.t 

Nothing is more common among the miracles 
of Popery, than to hear of images, that on certain 
occasions had spoken ; or shed tears ; or sweat ; 
or bled : and do not we find the very same sto- 
ries in all the heathen writers? Of which I 
could bring numberless examples from old as 
well as new Rome, from Pagan as well as Po- 
pish legends. Rome, as the describer of it says,§ 

* Plutarch in Camil. 

t Plutarch in Romul. 

t Rom. Modern. Gior. vi. Rion. di Monti xi. 

§ Non si puo negare, che per le grande abbondanza, che ha' 
Roma in simili tesori, non siano stati negligenti i nostri Mag- 
giori, in dame buon conto a posteri loro. Rom. Mod. R. di 
Monti xxi. 



FALSE MIRACLES. 93 

abounds with these treasures, or speaking im- 
ages : but he laments the negligence of their an- 
cestors, in not recording, so particularly as they 
ought, the very words and other circumstances 
of such conversations. They show us here an 
image of the Virgin, which reprimanded Gregory 
the Great for passing by her too carelessly : and, 
in St. Paul's church, a crucifix, which spoke to 
St. Bridget.* Durantns mentions another Ma- 
donna, which spoke to the sexton in commenda- 
tion of the piety of one of her votaries.t And 
did not the image of Fortune do the same, or 
more, in old Rome? which, as authors say, 
spoke twice in praise of those matrons, who had 
dedicated a temple to her.t 

They have a church here dedicated to St. 
Mary the Weeper, or to a Madonna famous for 
shedding tears : they show an image too of our 
Saviour, which for some time before the sacking 
of Rome wept so heartily, that the good fathers 
of the monastery were all employed in wiping 
its face with cotton :§ and was not the case just 
the same among their ancestors, when on the 

* Ad sanctum Paulum, ubi vidimus ligneam Crucifixi ima- 
ginem, quern sancta Brigida sibi loquentem audivisse perhibe- 
tur. Mabill. D. Italic, p. 133. 

t Imaginem Sanctae Mariae custodem Ecclesiae allocutam 
et Alexii singularem pietatem commendasse. Durant de Rit. 
L. i. c. 5. 

X Fortunae item Muliebris simulacrum, quod est in via La- 
tina, non semel, sed bis locutum constitit, his paene verbis : 
Bene me, matronae,vidisus, riteque dedicastis. Voter. Max. i. 8. 

§ Dicono, ch'avanti il sacco di Roma pianse piu volte, e li 
Padri ei venissero ad asciugar le lagrimc con bombace. Gior. 
vi. Rio di Man. xxxi. 



94 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

approach of some public calamity, the statue of 
"Apollo/' as Livy tells us, " wept for three days 
and nights successively ?"* They have another 
church built in honor of an image, which bled 
very plentifully, from a blow given to it by a 
blasphemer: and were not the old idols too as 
full of blood, when, as Livy relates, u all the 
images in the temple of Juno were seen to sweat 
with drops of it ?"t 

All which prodigies, as well modern as an- 
cient, are derived from the same source, viz., the 
contrivance of priests or governors, in order to 
draw some gain or advantage out of the poor 
people, whom they thus impose upon. 

Xenophon, though himself much addicted to 
superstition, speaking of the prodigies, which 
preceded the battle of Leuctra, and portended 
victory to the Thebans, tells us, that " some peo- 
ple looked upon them all as forged and contrived 
by the magistrates,"}: the better to animate and 
encourage the multitude: and as the originals 
themselves were but impostures, it is no wonder 
that the copies of them appear such gross and 
bungling forgeries. 

I have observed a story in Herodotus,§ not 
unlike the account which is given of the famed 

♦Apollo triduum et tres noctes lacrymavit. Lie. L. xliii. 13. 

t Signa ad Junonis Sospitae sudore manavere. Liv. xxiii. 
31. Ad lucum Feroniae sanguine sudarunt. lb. xxvii. 4. 

X Ot fiiv df] rives \eyovaiv o)j ravTa -navra TZ^yda^ara rjv t&v 
irpoeaTriKQTuv. Xenoph. Hellen. L. iv 

§ Herodot. L. iv. p. 235. Edit. Lond. 



FALSE MIRACLES. 95 

travels of the house of Loretto ;* of certain sa- 
cred mystical things, that travelled about from 
country to country, and after many removals 
and journeys, settled at last, for good and all, in 
Delus. But this imposture of the holy house 
might be suggested rather, as Mr. Addison has 
observed,! by the extraordinary veneration paid 
in old Rome to the cottage of its founder Romu- 
lus : which was held sacred by the people, and 
repaired with great care from time to time, with 
the same kind of materials, so as to be kept 
in the same form in which it was originally 
built. It was turned also, I find, like this other 

* One of the most ridiculous and contemptible of all the 
11 lying wonders " of Popery is the Santissima Casa, or holy 
house of the Virgin, at Loretto, a small town in the Pope's 
dominions in Italy. The Popish priests pretend that this is 
the house in which the Virgin Mary was born, and was carried 
by angels through the air, from Nazareth to Loretto some cen- 
turies ago; and that the Virgin Mary herself appeared to an old 
man to reveal to him the wonderful fact. They also show the 
Santissima Scodella, or holy porringer, in which they gravely 
assert, the pap was made for the infant Jesus (!) The pilgrims 
who visit this laughable imposture, regard it as a special favor 
to obtain a chaplet or a rosary that has been shaken in this won- 
derful porringer, duly certified by the priests, or an inch square 
of the Virgin's old veil, which is changed every year. 

Incredible as it may seem, the great body of Romanists, 
amidst the light of the nineteenth century, profess actually to 
believe this most absurd of all impostures; and a regular estab- 
lishment of priests is maintained, with an annual revenue of 
many thousand dollars, the proceeds of the exhibition. A small 
pebble picked up in the house, duly certified, has been sold for 
ten dollars, and an unfortunate mouse that had concealed itself 
under the Virgin's dress, for as much as would purchase an ox, 
and afterward embalmed by the purchaser, and kept as a pre- 
servative against diseases and accidents. The Litany to the 
11 Lady of Loretto" may be found in the u Garden of the Soul" 
(pacre 298,) New- York Edition. Published xoith the approbation 
of Bishop Hughes, 1844.— [D.] 

t Addison's Travels from Pesaro to Rome. 



96 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

cottage of our lady, into a temple, and had di- 
vine service performed in it, till it happened to 
be burnt down by the fire of a sacrifice in the 
time of Augustus; but what makes the simili- 
tude still more remarkable is, that this pretended 
cottage of Romulus was shown on the Capito- 
line Hill: whereas it is certain that Romulus 
himself lived on Mount Palatine :* so that, if it 
had really been the house of Romulus, it must 
needs, like the holy house of Loretto,have taken 
a leap in the air, and suffered a miraculous trans- 
lation, though not from so great a distance, yet 
from one hill at least to the other. 

But if we follow their own writers, it is not 
the holy house of Loretto, but the homely cradle 
of our Saviour, that we should compare rather 
with the little house of Romulus: which cradle 
is now shown in St. Mary the Great, and on 
Christmas day, exposed on the high altar to the 
adoration of the people; being held in the same 
veneration by present Rome, as the humble cot- 
tage of its founder had been by its old inhabit- 
ants. Rome, says Baronius, " is now in pos- 
session of that noble monument of Christ's 
nativity, made only of wood, without any orna- 
ment of silver or gold, and is made more happily 
illustrious by it, than it was of old by the cottage 
of Romulus ; which, though built only with mud 
and straw, our ancestors preserved with great 
care for many ages."t 

* Plutarch in Romul. 

t Porro in Christi natalis nobile monumentum ex ligno con- 
fectum nullaque argenti vel auri caelatura confectum, Roma 



FALSE MIRACLES. 97 

The melting of St. Januarius's blood at Na- 
ples, whenever it is brought to his head, which 
is done with great solemnity on the day of his 
festival,* whilst at all other times it continues 
dried and congealed in a glass phial, is one of 
the standing and most authentic miracles of 
Italy. t Yet Mr. Addison, who twice saw it per- 
formed, assures us, that instead of appearing to 
be a real miracle, he thought it one of the most 
bungling tricks that he had ever seen.t 

Mabillon's account of the fact seems to solve 
it very naturally, without the help of a miracle : 
for during the time that a mass or two are cele- 
brated in the church, the other priests are tam- 
pering with this phial of blood, which is sus- 
pended all the while in such a situation, that 
as soon as any part of it begins to melt by the 
heat of their hands, or other management, it 
drops of course into the lower side of the glass, 
which is empty ;§ upon the first discovery of 

possidet, eoque multo felicius illustratur quam tugurio Romuli, 
&c. Vid. Baron. An. i. Christi v. 

* De sancti Januarii cruore mirum quiddam narratur in 
Breviario Romano — quod ejus sanguis, qui in ampulla vitrea 
concretus asservatur, cum in conspectu capitis ponitur, admi- 
randum in modum colliquifieri videtur. Aringh. Rom. Subter. 
L. i. 16. 

A very wonderful thing is related in the Roman Breviary, 
concerning the blood of St. Januarius. That his blood, which 
is kept congealed in a glass phial, when it is placed in sight of 
his head, is seen to become liquid in a wonderful manner. — [D.] 

t For an amusing incident connected with this pretended 
miracle, during the invasion of Italy by the troops of Napoleon, 
see Appendix A. 

X Addison's Trav. at Naples. 

v Mabill. Iter. Ital. p. 106. 



98 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

which, the miracle is proclaimed aloud, to the 
great joy and edification of the people. 

But by what way soever it be effected, it is 
plainly nothing else but the copy of an old cheat 
of the same kind, transacted near the same place, 
which Horace makes himself merry with in his 
journey to Brundusium; telling us how the 
priests would have imposed upon him and his 
friends, at a town called Gnatia, by persuading 
them that the frankincense in the temple used 
to dissolve and melt miraculously of itself, with- 
out the help of fire.* 

In the cathedral church of Ravenna, I saw in 
Mosaic work the pictures of those archbishops 
of the place, who, as all their historians aflirm,t 
were chosen for several ages successively by the 
special designation of the Holy Ghost, who, in 
a full assembly of the clergy and people, used to 
descend visibly on the person elect, in the shape 
of a dove. If the fact of such a descent be true, 
it will easily be accounted for by a passage in 
Aulus Gellius, (whence the hint was probably 
taken,) who tells us of Archytas the philosopher 
and mathematician, that he formed a pigeon of 
wood so artificially, as to make it fly by the 
power of mechanism, just as he directed it.J 
And we find from Strada, that many tricks of 
this kind were actually contrived for the diver- 
sion of Charles the fifth in his monastery, by one 
Turrianus, who made little birds fly out of the 

♦ Hor. Sat. i. v. ver.98. 

t Hist. Raven. &c. Aringh. Rom. Subt, L. vi. c. 48 

J Aul. Gell. Noct. Att. L. x. 12. 



FALSE MIRACLES. 99 

room and back again, by his great skill in ma- 
chinery. 

It would be endless to run through all the 
Popish miracles, which are evidently forged, or 
copied from the originals of Paganism ; since 
there is scarce a prodigy in the old historians, or 
a fable in the old poets, but what is transcribed 
into their legends, and swallowed by their silly 
bigots, as certain and undoubted facts. 

The story of Arion the musician, riding tri- 
umphant with his harp on the back of a dolphin, 
that took him up when thrown overboard at sea, 
is, one would think, too grossly fabulous to be 
applied to any purpose of Christian superstition : 
yet our present Romans so far surpass the old in 
fable and imposture, that out of this single story 
they have coined many of the same stamp, viz., 
of dolphins taking up and bringing ashore with 
great pomp several of their saints, both dead and 
alive, who had been thrown into the sea by in- 
fidels, either to drown, or to deprive them of 
burial.* 

The fable of the harpies, those furies or 
winged monsters, who were so troublesome to 
iEneas and his companions,t seems to be copied 
in the very first church within the walls of 
Rome, close to the gate of the people, as it is 
called, by which we enter it from the north: 
where there is an altar with a public inscription 
signifying, that it was "built by pope Paschal 
the second, by divine inspiration, in order to 

* Aringh. Rom. Subter. L. i. c. 9, 10. 
t Vir£. Mn. iii. 211. 



100 POPERY AND PAGANISH. 

drive away a nest of huge demons or monsters, 
who used to perch upon a tree in that very place, 
and terribly insult all who entered the city.''* 

The Popish writers themselves are forced to 
allow, that many both of their relics and their 
miracles have been forged by the craft of priests, 
for the sake of money and lucre. Durantus, a 
zealous defender of all their ceremonies, gives 
several instances of the former; particularly of 
the bones of a common thief, which had for 
some time been honored with an altar, and wor- 
shipped under the title of a saint.t And for the 
latter : Lyra, in his Comment on Bel and the 
Dragon, observes, that "sometimes also in the 
church, very great cheats are put upon the peo- 
ple by false miracles, contrived, or countenanced 
at least, by their priests for some gain and tem- 
poral advantage.''! And what their own authors 
confess of some of their miracles, we may ven- 

* ALTARE A PASCHALI PAPA II. DIVINO AFFLATU 

RITU SOLEMNI HOC LOCO EEECTUM, 

QUO D.EMONES PROCEROS 

NUCIS ARBORI INSIDENTES, 

TRANSEUNTEM HINC POPULUM DIRE 1NSCLTANTES, 

CONFESTIM EXPULIT, 

URBANI VIII. PONT. MAX. AUCTORITATE 

EXCELSIOREM IN LOCUM QUEM CONSPICIS 

TRANSLATUM FUIT 

AN. DOM. MDCXXVII. 

t S. Martinus altare, quod in honorem Martyris exstructum 
fuerat, cum ossa et reliquias cujusdam latronis esse deprehen- 
disset, submoveri jussit. Durant. de Ritib. L. i. c 25. 

St. Martin ordered the altar which had be^n constructed in 
honor of a martyr to be removed when he discovered the bones 
and remains to be those of a certain thief. — [D.] 

t Aliquando fit in Ecclesia maxima deceptio populi in mi- 
raculis fictis a sacerdotibus, vel eis adhaerentibus propter lu- 
crum temporale, &c. Vid. Xic. Lyr. in Dan. c. xiv. 



FALSE MIRACLES. 



101 



ture, without any breach of charity, to believe of 
them all; nay, we cannot indeed believe any 
thing else without impiety ; and without sup- 
posing God to concur in an extraordinary man- 
ner, to the establishment of fraud, error, and 
superstition in the world. 
9* 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CHURCH REFUGE ORDERS OF PRIESTS AST) FRIARS. 

The refuge or protection given to all who fly 
to the church for shelter, is a privilege directly 
transferred from the heathen temples to the Po- 
pish churches : and has been practised in Rome 
from the time of its founder Romulus ; who, in 
imitation of the cities of Greece, opened an asy- 
lum or sanctuary to fugitives of all nations. 

But we may observe the great moderation of 
Pagan, above that of Popish Rome, in regard to 
this custom; for I do not remember that there 
ever was more than one asylum in the times of 
the republic ; whereas there are now some hun- 
dreds in the same city; and when that single 
one (which was opened rather for the increase 
of its inhabitants than the protection of crimi- 
nals) was found in the end to give too great 
encouragement to mischief and licentiousness, 
they enclosed it round in such a manner as to 
hinder all access to it: whereas, the present 
Popish sanctuaries stand perpetually open, not 
to receive strangers, but to shelter villains ; so 



CRURCH REFUGE. 103 

that it may literally be said of these, what our 
Saviour said of the Jewish temple, that they 
have turned the house of prayer into a den of 
thieves.* 

In the early ages of Christianity there were 
many limitations put upon the use of this privi- 
lege by emperors and councils ; and the greater 
crimes of murder, adultery, theft, &c, were es- 
pecially excepted from the benefit of it : but now 
they scruple not to receive to sanctuary, even 
the most detestable crimes ; and it is owing, 
without doubt, to this policy of holy church, that 
murders are so common with them in Italy on 
slight provocations: whilst there is a church 
always at hand and always open, to secure of- 
fenders from legal punishment ; several of whom 
have been shown to me in different places, walk- 
ing about at their ease, and in full security 
within the bounds of their sanctuary. 

In their very priesthood they have contrived, 
one would think, to keep up as near a resem- 
blance as they could, to that of Pagan Rome: 
and the sovereign pontiff, instead of deriving his 
succession from St. Peter, (who, if ever he was 
at Rome, did not reside there at least in any 
worldly pomp or splendor,) may with more rea- 
son, and a much better plea, style himself the 
successor of the Pontifex Maximns, or chief 
priest of old Rome ; whose authority and dignity 
was the greatest in the republic ; and who was 
looked upon as the arbiter or judge of all things, 
civil as well as sacred, human as well as divine ; 
* Matth. xxi. 13. 



104 POPERY AND PAGANI.- 

whose power, established almost with the foun- 
dation of the city. " was an omen (says Polydore 
Virgil and sure presage of that priestly majesty, 
by which Rome was once again to reign as 
universally as it had done before by the force of 
its arms."* 

But of all the sovereign pontiffs of Pagan 
Rome, it is very remarkable that Caligula was 
the first who ever offered his foot to be kissed 
by any who approached him: which raised a 
general indignation through the city, to see 
themselves reduced to suffer so great an indig- 
nity. Those who endeavored to excuse it said, 
that it was not done out of insolence, but vanity ; 
and for the sake of showing his golden slipper, 
set with jewels. Seneca declaims upon it, in his 
usual manner, as the last affront to liberty; and 
the introduction of a Persian slavery into the 
manners of Rome.^ Yet this servile act, un- 
worthy either to be imposed or complied with 
by man, is now the standing ceremonial of Chris- 
tian Rome, and a necessary condition of access 
to the reigning popes, though derived from no 
better origin, than the frantic pride of a brutal 
Paean tyrant. 

The great variety of their religious orders 
and societies of priests seems to have been 
formed upon the plan of the old colleges or fra- 
ternities of the Augurs, Pontifices, Salii, Fratres 

* Certum portentum quo est significatum, Urbem Romam 
•.mo perinde Pontificia Majestate, qua nunc late patet, 
gentibus moderaturam. atque oliru potentia imperasset. Pol. 
i'ir^r. Inr. rer, L. iv. 14. 

t Senec. de Benei. L. ii. 12. 



THE PRIESTHOOD. 105 

Arvales, &c. The vestal virgins might furnish 
the hint for the foundation of nunneries : and I 
have observed something very like to the rules 
and austerities of the monastic life, in the cha- 
racter and manner of several priests of the hea- 
thens, who used to live by themselves, retired 
from the world, near to the temple or oracle of 
the deity, to whose particular service they were 
devoted ; as the Selli, the priests of Dodonsean 
Jove, a self-mortifying race. 

dp(pl 61 2eXXot 
Ttol valova* vnocprjrai dv itt tot: o Seg ^afxaiexjuai. 

Horn. 11. xvii. 234. 

"Whose groves the Selli, race austere, surround; 
Their feet unwash'd, their slumbers on the ground."* 

Pope. 

But above all, in the old descriptions of the 
lazy mendicant priests among the heathens, who 
used to travel from house to house, with sacks 
on their backs; and, from an opinion of their 
sanctity, raise large contributions of money, 
bread, wine, and all kinds of victuals, for the 
support of their fraternity,t we see the very pic- 
ture of the begging friars ; who are always about 
the streets in the same habit, and on the same 

* From the character of these Selli, or as others call them, 
Elfi, the monks of the Pagan world, seated in the fruitful soil 
of Dodona ; abounding, as Hesiod describes it, with every thing 
that could make life easy and happy; and whither no man ever 
approached them without an offering in his hands, we may 
loam whence their successors of modern times have derived 
that peculiar skill or prescriptive right, of choosing the richest 
part of every country for the place of their settlement. Vid. 
Sophoc. Trachin. p. 340, v. 1175. Edit. Tu.rncb. and Schol. 
Trtclin. 

t Apuleius Metam. L. viii. p. 262. 



106 POrERY AND PAGANISM. 

errand, and never fail to carry home with them 
a good sack full of provisions for the use of their 
convent. 

Cicero, in his book of laws, restrains this prac- 
tice of begging, or gathering alms, to one partic- 
ular order of priests, and that only on certain 
days ; because, as he says, it propagates super- 
stition and impoverishes families.* Which, by 
the way, may let us see the policy of the church 
of Rome, in the great care that they have taken 
to multiply their begging orders. 

* Stipeni sustulimus, nisi earn quam ad paucos dies propri- 
am Idaefe Matris excepimus : implet enim superstitione amnios, 
exhaurit domos. Cic. de Legib. L. ii. 9, 1G. 



CHAPTER IX. 



CONCLUSION. 



I could easily carry on this parallel through 
many more instances of the Pagan and Popish 
ceremonies, if I had not already said enough, to 
show from what spring all that superstition 
flows, which we so justly charge them with, and 
how vain an attempt it must be to justify, by 
the principles of Christianity, a worship formed 
upon the plan, and after the very pattern of pure 
heathenism.* I shall not trouble myself with 
inquiring at what time, and in what manner 
these several corruptions were introduced into 
the church : whether they were contrived by the 
intrigues and avarice of priests, who found their 
advantage in reviving and propagating impos- 
tures, which had been of old so profitable to 

* It is a remarkable fact that a resemblance exists between 
Popery and some systems of modern Paganism, almost as 
striking as that which Dr. Middleton shows between Popery 
and ancient Paganism. For a letter addressed to the Editor, 
in proof of this remark, by a distinguished missionary, see Ap- 
pendix B. 



108 rOPERY AND PAGANISM. 

their predecessors ; or whether the genius of 
Rome was so strongly turned to fanaticism and 
superstition, that they were forced, in condescen- 
sion to the humor of the people, to dress up their 
new religion to the modes and fopperies of the 
old. This, I know, is the principle by which 
their own writers defend themselves, as oft as 
they are attacked on this head. 

Aringhus, in his account of subterraneous 
Rome, acknowledges this conformity between 
the Pagan and Popish rites, and defends the 
admission of the ceremonies of heathenism into 
the service of the church, by the authority of 
their wisest popes and governors, " who found 
it necessary, he says, in the conversion of the 
Gentiles, to dissemble and wink at many things. 
and yield to the times; and not to use force 
against customs, which the people were so ob- 
stinately fond of; nor to think of extirpating at 
once every thing that had the appearance of 
profane ; but to supersede in some measure the 
obligation of the sacred laws ; till these con- 
verts, convinced by degrees, and informed of the 
whole truth, by the suggestions of the Holy 
Spirit, should be content to submit in earnest to 
the yoke of Christ."* 

* Ac maximi subinde Pontifices quamplurima prima quidem 
facie dissimulanda duxere, optimum videlicet rati tempori de- 
ferendum esse; suadebant quippe sibi, haud ullam adversus 
gentilitiosritus vim, utpotequi mordicus a fidelibus retineban- 
tur, adhibendam esse ; neque ullatenus enitendum, ut quicquid 
profanos saperet mores, omnino tolleretur, quin imo quam 
maxima utendum lenitate, sacrarumque legum ex parte inter- 
mittendum imperium arbitrabantur, &c. Vid. Aring. Rom. 
Subter. Tom. i. L. i. c. 21. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 109 

It is by the same principles, that the Jesuits 
defend the concessions, which they make at this 
day to their proselytes in China; who, where 
pure Christianity will not go down, never scru- 
ple to compound the matter between Jesus and 
Confucius ; and prudently allow, what the stiff 
old prophets so impoliticly condemned, a partner- 
ship between God and Baal : of which, though 
they have often been accused at the Court of 
Rome, yet I have never heard that their conduct 
has been censured.* But this kind of reasoning, 
how plausible soever it may be with regard to 
the first ages of Christianity, or to nations just 
converted from Paganism, is so far from excusing 
the present Gentilism of the church of Rome, that 
it is a direct condemnation of it; since the neces- 
sity alleged for the practice, if ever it* had any 
real force, has not, at least for many ages past, 
at all subsisted; and their toleration of such 
practices, however useful at first for reconciling 
heathens to Christianity, seems now to be the 
readiest way to drive Christians back again to 
heathenism. 

But it is high time for me to conclude, being 
persuaded, if I do not flatter myself too much, 
that I have sufficiently made good what I first 
undertook to prove : an exact conformity, or uui- 

* This remark of Dr. Middleton must be understood with 
some qualification, as in point of fact a decree was issued 
against the proceedings of the Jesuits in China, by pope Cle- 
ment XI. in 1704, though the effect of this decree was nullified 
by a subsequent one from the same Pope in 1715. For some 
particulars relative to the proceedings of the Jesuit missiona- 
ries, see Appendix C. 

10 



110 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

formity, rather, of worship, between Popery and 
Paganism; for since, as I have shown above, 
we see the present people of Rome worshipping 
in the same temples, at the same altars, some- 
times the same images, and always with the 
same ceremonies, as the old Romans ; they must 
have more charity, as well as skill in distin- 
guishing, than I pretend to have, who can ab- 
solve them from the same superstition and idol- 
atry, of which we condemn their Pagan ances- 
tors. 



A DEFENCE 



LETTER FROM ROME, 



IN REPLY TO A WORK ENTITLED 



"THE CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTED/' 



CONFERS MIDDLETON, D. D. 



DEFENCE 



LETTER FROM ROME. 



A late writer of a Popish book, entitled The 
Catholic Christian Instructed; &c, has thought 
fit, in a preface to that work, to attempt a con- 
futation of my Letter from Rome ; " which every 
reader," he says, "whether Protestant or Papist, 
would expect that he should take some notice 
of, as it is directly levelled at their ceremonies, 
and has been so well received, as to pass through 
three editions within the compass of a few 
years." 

§ 1. Preliminary Remarks, — I cannot think 
it strange, that a man, whose avowed design 
and sole employment amongst us is, to make 
converts to the Romish church, should treat a 
work with some acrimony, that was published 
with no other view than to blast his hopes, and 
obstruct his endeavors, to delude the people of 
this nation : but it gives me a sensible pleasure 
to observe, what these missionaries of Rome are 
forced to confess, that my little performance is a 
]0* 



114 middleton's defence of 

real obstacle to their designs; and that one of 
the first steps necessary towards advancing the 
Popish interest in England, is to overthrow the 
credit both of the letter and its author. 

Our Catholic therefore, in the execution of this 
task, sets out with a general accusation against 
me of foul play, and disingenuity, and a resolu- 
tion to suppress the truth ; because my charge 
against them is grounded only, he says, "on cer- 
tain ceremonies and observances of less moment, 
without taking notice of the substantial parts of 
their religion ; their belief of the Scriptures ; of 
the three Creeds ; of the Trinity ; the Eucharist 
Sacrifice, &c, which none will pretend to be 
derived to them from the Pagans." This is art- 
fully thrown out, to confound the true state of 
the question ; and to prepossess the reader with 
a notion, that, instead of Popery, lam attacking 
Christianity itself, and sustaining the cause of 
infidelity, not of protestantism; but every man 
of sense will discern the fallacy, and observe 
that it is Popery alone with which I am engaged ; 
or that system of ceremonies and doctrines which 
is peculiar to the Romish church, as distin- 
guished from other Christian churches : the 
source of which I have undertaken to lay open, 
and by a historical deduction of facts, to trace 
its origin in a direct line, from Pagan down to 
Popish Rome. 

In the farther support of this charge, I shall 
now proceed to examine our author's exceptions 
to it, in the order as they lie in his preface, and 
vindicate all the particular proofs of it alleged in 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 115 

my letter, to which he has thought proper to 
give any answer: the chief of which, as he tells 
us, are "incense; holy water; lamps and can- 
dles; votive offerings; images; chapels on the 
waysides and tops of hills; processions; mira- 
cles." On these I shall join issue with him ; and 
endeavor to show, that his defence of them is 
riot only frivolous and evasive, but tends rather 
to confirm than to confute the inference which I 
have drawn from them. 

§ 2. Origin of Popish Rites. — As to several 
of these articles, he makes one general apology; 
that I " am mistaken in thinking every ceremony 
used by the heathens to be heathenish, since the 
greatest part were borrowed from the worship of 
the true God; in imitation of which the devil 
affected to have his temples, altars, priests and 
sacrifices, and all other things, which were used 
in the true worship." This he applies to the 
case of incense, lamps, holy water, and proces- 
sions; and adds, "that if I had been as well 
read in the Scriptures, as I would seem to be in 
the heathen poets, I should have found the use 
of all these in the temple of God, and that by 
God's appointment." 

I shall not dispute with him about the origin 
of these rites ; whether they were first instituted 
by Moses, or were of prior use and antiquity 
among the Egyptians. The Scriptures favor 
the last ; which our Spenser strongly asserts, 
and their Calmet and Huetius allow : but should 
we grant him all that he can infer from his argu- 
ment, what will he gain by it ? Were not all 



116 middleton's defence of 

those beggarly elements wiped away by the 
spiritual worship of the gospel? Were they not 
all annulled on the account of their weakness 
and unprofitableness, by the more perfect reve- 
lation of Jesus Christ?* If then I should ac- 
knowledge my mistake, and recall my words; 
and instead of Pagan, call them Jewish ceremo- 
nies, would not the use of Jewish rites be abom- 
inable still in a Christian church, where they 
are expressly abolished and prohibited by God 
himself ? 

But to pursue his argument a little farther: 
while the Mosaic worship subsisted by divine 
appointment in Jerusalem, the devil likewise, as 
he tells us, had temples and ceremonies of the 
same kind in order to draw votaries to his idola- 
trous worship : which, after the abolition of the 
Jewish service, was carried on still with great 
pomp and splendor ; and, above all places, in 
Rome, the principal seat of his worldly empire. 
Now it is certain, that in the early times of the 
gospel, the Christians of Rome were celebrated 
for their zealous adherence to the faith of Christ, 
as it was delivered to them by the apostles, pure 
from every mixture either of Jewish or heathen- 
ish superstition ; till after a succession of ages, 
as they began gradually to deviate from that 
apostolic simplicity, they introduced at different 
times into the church the particular ceremonies 
in question. Whence then can we think it pro- 
bable, that they should borrow them? From 
the Jewish or the Pagan ritual ? From a temple 

* Galat. iv. 9. Heb. vii. 18. 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 117 

remote, despised, and demolished by the Ro- 
mans themselves; or from temples and altars 
perpetually in their view, and subsisting in their 
streets; in which their ancestors and fellow- 
citizens had constantly worsh ipped ? The ques- 
tion can hardly admit any dispute: the humor 
of the people, as well as interest of a corrupted 
priesthood would invite them to adopt such rites 
as were native to the soil, and found upon the 
place ; and which long experience had shown 
to be useful, to the acquisition both of wealth 
and power. Thus by the most candid construc- 
tion of this author's reasoning, we must neces- 
sarily call their ceremonies Jewish ; or by push- 
ing it to its full length, shall be obliged to call 
them devilish. 

§ 3. Use of Incense. — He observes, that I be- 
gin my charge with the use of incense, as the 
most notorious proof of their Paganism, and, 
like an artful rhetorician, place my strongest 
argument in the front. Yet he knows that I 
have assigned a different reason for offering that 
the first : because it is the first thing that strikes 
the senses, and surprises a stranger, upon his 
entrance into their churches. But it shall be my 
strongest proof, if he will have it so, since he has 
brought nothing, I am sure, to weaken the force 
of it. He tells us, that there was an altar of in- 
cense in the temple of Jerusalem : and is sur- 
prised therefore how I can call it heathenish: 
yet it is evident, from the nature of that institu- 
tion, that it was never designed to be perpetual ; 
and that, during its continuance, God would 



118 middletcln's defence of 

never have approved any other altar, either in 
Jerusalem, or any where else. But let him an- 
swer directly to this plain question ; was there 
ever a temple in the world not strictly heathen- 
ish, in which there were several altars, all 
smoking with incense, within one view, and at 
one and the same time? It is certain, that he 
must answer in the negative : yet it is as certain 
that there were many such temples in Pagan 
Rome ; and are as many still in Christian Rome : 
and since there never was an example of it, but 
what was Paganish, before the times of Popery, 
how is it possible, that it could be derived to 
them from any other source? or when we see so 
exact a resemblance in the copy, how can there 
be any doubt about the original? 

What he alleges therefore in favor of incense 
is nothing to the purpose ; " that it was used in 
the Jewish, and is of great antiquity in the Chris- 
tian church ; and that it is mentioned with honor 
in the Scriptures;" which frequently compare it 
to prayer, and speak of its sweet odors ascend- 
ing up to God, &c, which figurative expressions, 
he says, u would never have been borrowed by 
the sacred penmen from heathenish supersti- 
tion:" as if such allusions were less proper, or 
the thing itself less sweet, for its being applied 
to the purposes of idolatry ; as it constantly was 
in the times even of the same penmen, and ac- 
cording to their own accounts, on the altars of 
Baal, and the other heathen idols: and when 
Jeremiah rebukes the people of Judah for burn- 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 119 

ing incense to the queen of heaven,* one can 
hardly help imagining, that he is prophetically 
pointing out the worship now paid to the Virgin ; 
to whom they actually burn incense at this day 
under that very title.t 

But if it be a just ground for retaining a prac- 
tice in the Christian church, because it was en- 
joined to the Jews, what will our Catholic say 
for those usages, which were actually prohibited 
to the Jews, and never practised by any but by 
the heathens and the papists ? All the Egyptian 
priests, as Herodotus informs us, "had their 
heads shaved and kept continually bald/'t 
Thus the emperor Com modus, that he might be 
admitted into that order, "got himself shaved, 
and carried the god Anubis in procession. "§ And 
it was on this account most probably, that the 
Jewish priests were commanded not to shave 
their heads, nor to make any baldness upon 
them.ll Yet this Pagan rasure, or tonsure, as 
they choose to call it, on the crown of the head, 
has long been the distinguishing mark of the 
Romish priesthood. It was on the same account 
we may imagine, that the Jewish priests were 
forbidden to make any cuttings in their flesh ;1f 
since that likewise was the common practice of 

* Jerem. xliv. 17, 

t Vid. Offic. Beatoe Virg. Salve Regina ; Ave Regina ccelo- 
rum ; Domina Angelorum, &c. 

See the offices of the blessed Virgin. Hail queen of heaven, 
mistress of angels, &c. — [D.] 

t Herodot. L. ii. 36. 

§ Sacra Isidis coluit, ut et caput raderet et Anubin portaret. 
JUim]>rid. in Commod. 9. 

II Levitic. xxi. 5. Ezek. xliv. 20. 

IT Levitic. xix. 28; xxi. 5. 



120 middleton's defence of 

certain priests and devotees among the heathens, 
in order to acquire the fame of a more exalted 
sanctity. Yet the same discipline, as I have 
shown in my letter, is constantly practised at 
Rome, in some of their solemn seasons and pro- 
cessions, in imitation of those Pagan enthusiasts : 
as if they searched the Scriptures, to learn, not 
so much what was enjoined by the true religion, 
as what had been useful at any time in a false 
one, to delude the multitude, and support an im- 
posture. 

§ 4. Holy Water. — Our author makes the 
same apology for holy water, that he has just 
made for incense ; that, in the Mosaic law, we 
find the mention of a water sanctified for reli- 
gious uses; which cannot therefore be called 
heathenish ; and that I might, with as good a 
grace have proved the sacrament of baptism to 
be heathenish, as their use of holy water. It is 
surprising to hear such a defence from any one 
who calls himself a Christian. The sacrament 
of baptism was ordained by Christ, in the most 
solemn manner, and for the most solemn pur- 
pose, as the essential rite of our initiation into 
his church ; while there is not the least hint in 
any part of the gospel that any other water was 
either necessary, or proper, or useful in any de- 
gree to the washing away of sin. But our au- 
thor's zeal seems to have carried him here be- 
yond his prudence ; and he forgets what ground 
he is treading, if he fancies that he can defend, 
in this protestant country, what he might affirm 
with applause in a Popish ; that the institutions 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 121 

of Christ stand upon no better foundation than 
the injunctions of the pope, or at least of the 
Popish church. 

I have mentioned one use of their holy water 
in a festival at Rome, called the benediction of 
horses, which seems to perplex him. He dares 
not deny the fact, yet labors to render it suspect- 
ed, and declares, "that though he had spent the 
greatest part of his life abroad, he had never seen 
or heard of any such thing." But whatever he 
thinks, or would seem rather to think of it, I 
know the thing to be true from the evidence of 
my own eyes:* yet as I had no desire, that the 
reader should take my bare word for that, or any 
other fact in the letter, I took care to add such 
testimonies of it as every one will allow to be 
authentic. But if he really be a stranger to so 
extraordinary a practice, he must be an improper 
advocate of a cause of which he owns himself to 
be ignorant. The learned Mabillon, as I have 
observed, intimates his surprise at this, as well 
as many other parts of their worship, which he 
had never seen till he travelled into Italy ; but, 
instead of defending, chooses either to drop them 
in silence, or to give them up as superstitious : 
which might have been the case also of our 
Catholic, if he had been better informed of the 
facts which he has undertaken to vindicate. 
But if these men of learning, and teachers of re- 
ligion, know so little of what is done at Rome, 
how easy must it be to impose upon the poor 

* For the testimony of a recent eye-witness to this absurd 
ceremony, see Appendix D. 

11 



122 middleton's defence of 

Catholics in England, and keep them in the 
dark, as to the more exceptionable parts of their 
worship, which are openly avowed and prac- 
tised abroad, to the scandal of all the candid, 
and moderate even of their own communion. 

But though our Catholic seems so much 
ashamed at present of this benediction of horses 
in their church. I can give him such light into 
the origin of it, as will make him proud of it 
probably for the future : from a story that I have 
observed in St. Jerom ; which shows it to be 
grounded on a miracle, and derived from a saint : 
I mean St. Hilarion, the founder of the monastic 
orders in Syria and Palestine. 

The story is this ; " a citizen of Gaza, a Chris- 
tian, who kept a stable of running horses for the 
Circensian games, was always beaten by his 
antagonist, an idolater; the master of a rival 
stable. For the idolater, by the help of certain 
charms, and diabolical imprecations, constantly 
damped the spirits of the Christian's horses, and 
added courage to his own. The Christian there- 
fore in despair, applied himself to St. Hilarion, 
and implored his assistance : but the saint was 
unwilling to enter into an affair so frivolous and 
profane; till the Christian urging it as a neces- 
sary defence against these adversaries of God, 
whose insults were levelled not so much at him 
as at the church of Christ; and his entreaties 
being seconded by the monks, who were present, 
the saint ordered his earthen jug, out of which 
he used to drink, to be filled with water and de- 
livered to the man : who presently sprinkled his 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 123 

stable, his horses, his charioteers, his chariot, 
and the very boundaries of the course with it. 
Upon this, the whole city was in wondrous ex- 
pectation : the idolaters derided what the Chris- 
tian was doing; while the Christians took cou- 
rage, and assured themselves of victory ; till the 
signal being given for the race, the Christian's 
horses seemed to fly, whilst the idolater's were 
laboring behind, and left quite out of sight ; so 
that the Pagans themselves were forced to cry 
out, that their god Marnas was conquered at last 
by Christ."* Thus this memorable function, 
borrowed originally from the Pagan sprinklers 
of the Circensian games, appears to be as an- 
cient almost in the church as monkery itself, 
and one of the first inventions, for which Popery 
stands indebted to that religious institution. 

§ 5. Lighted Candles. — As to the lamps and 
candles, which are constantly burning before 
the altars of their saints, he tells us once more ; 
"that though the devil had procured them to be 
set up in his temples, yet they were appointed 
originally by God for the service of his taberna- 
cle; and were not therefore borrowed from the 
heathenish, but the Mosaic worship." To which 
I need not repeat what I have already said on 
the foregoing articles. I had deduced the origin 
of these lamps from Egypt, upon the authority 
of Clemens Alexandrinus : but he declares that 
Clemens says no such thing : yet does not think 
fit to tell us what it is that he has said, nor how 
near it approaches to the interpretation which I 

* Hieron. Op. Tom. iv. par. 2. p. 80. 



124 middleton's defence of 

have given of it. Clemens expressly ascribes 
the invention of lamps to the Egyptians, in 
which he is followed by Easebius ; and since 
lamps were used in all the Pagan temples from 
the earliest times, of which we have any notice, 
I take it for a necessary consequence, that the 
Egyptians were the first who made use of them 
likewise in their temples. 

But let that be as it will, this at least is certain, 
that the use of them in Christian churches was 
condemned by many of the primitive bishops 
and presbyters, as superstitious and heathenish. 
But all these our Catholic makes no scruple to 
brand with the title of heretics : though many 
of them, perhaps, might more truly be called the 
protestants of the primitive church ; particularly 
Vigilantius;* who, by all that I have been able 
to observe about him, incurred the charge of 
heresy for no other crime than that of writing 
against monkery ; the celibacy of the clergy ; 
praying for the dead ; worshipping the relics of 
martyrs ; and lighting up candles to them, after 
the manner of the Pagans.t But St. Jerom has 
given the most rational definition of heresy, 
where he says, ' : that those who interpret Scrip- 
ture to any sense, repugnant to that of the Holy 
Spirit, though they should never withdraw 
themselves from the church, yet may be justly 

* For an account of the character and doctrines of Viffilan- 
tius, as also of Jovinian, another reformer of the fifth century, 
the editor would refer to his ■' History of Romanism," page 78, 
note,— [D.] 

t Hieron. Oper. T. iv. par. ii. p. 275, 282. Edit. Benedict. 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 125 

called heretics."* By which criterion the Ro- 
mish church will be found much more heretical 
than any of those who, either in ancient or 
modern times, have separated themselves from 
its communion on the account of its doctrines. 

§ 6. Votive Offerings. — My next instance of 
their Paganism is the number of their donaria or 
votive offerings, hanging around the altars of 
their saints : where our author, having nothing 
to allege from Scripture, nor any example from 
antiquity, but what is purely heathenish, is 
forced to change his tone, and to declare, " that 
things innocent in themselves cannot be rendered 
unlawful for having been abused by the hea- 
thens ; and that it cannot be disagreeable to the 
true God, that those who believe themselves to 
have received favors from him by the prayers of 
his saints, should make a public acknowledg- 
ment of it." But can a practice be called inno- 
cent which is a confessed copy of Paganish su- 
perstition 3 which tends to weaken our depend- 
ence on God, and to place it on those who are 
not probably in a condition either to hear, or to 
help us? which imprints the same veneration for 
the Christian saints that the Pagans paid to their 
subordinate deities; and transfers the honor due 
to God to the altars of departed mortals? Such 
a worship, I say, so far from being innocent, 
must necessarily be condemned by all unpreju- 
diced men, as profane and idolatrous ; as it will 
more evidently appear to be, from our consider- 
ation of the next article, their worship of images. 

* Hieron. Oper, T. iv. par. i. p. 302. 
11* 



126 middleton's defence of 

§ 7. Image Worship. — On this head, our 
Catholic pours out all his rage against me ; 
charges me with "slander and misrepresenta- 
tion, and notorious untruths; says that 1 am no 
better friend to Christianity than to Popery ; that 
I imitate the ancient heretics, and copy my ar- 
guments from the apostate Julian :" by which he 
shows in what manner he would silence me, if 
he had me under his discipline : but I can easily 
forgive his railing, while I find myself out of his 
power; and rejoice, that we live in a country 
where he can use a liberty which no Popish 
government would indulge to a protestant. The 
ground of all this clamor is, my treating their 
image worship as idolatrous: yet he does not 
pretend to contradict my facts, but the inference 
only, that I draw from them ; and since he can- 
not overthrow my premises, is the more enraged 
at my conclusion. 

I had defined idols, upon the authority of St. 
Jerom, to be images of the dead : where he is 
simple enough to imagine that I included in my 
definition, all images and pictures whatsoever 
of the dead ; and calls it therefore - : a brat of my 
own, which I falsely father upon St. Jerom.*' Yet 
every man must see, that I could mean no other 
images but such as I was there treating of ; 
such as had temples, altars, and a religious wor- 
ship instituted to them ; for such are all the 
images of the Popish church ; and of all such 
images of the dead, I shall affirm again with St. 
Jerom, that they are true and proper idols. 

It is not my present design to enter into a for- 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 127 

mal discussion of the nature of idolatry ; which 
according to every sense of it, as our divines 
have fully demonstrated, is now exercised in 
Popish Rome upon the very same principles on 
which it was formerly practised in Pagan Rome. 
The purpose of the following letter is to illus- 
trate this argument by the more sensible evidence 
of fact: and, in spite of the cavils and evasive 
distinctions of their schools, to show their wor- 
ship of images or of saints, call it which they 
will, to be properly and actually idolatrous. But 
our author defines idols " to be such images only 
as are set up for gods, and honored as such ; or 
in which some divinity or power is believed to 
reside by their worshippers; who accordingly 
offer prayers and sacrifice to them, and put their 
trust in them." 

"Such" says he, t: were the idolsof the Gentiles," 
and such, I shall venture to say, are the idols of 
the Papists. For what else can we say of those 
miraculous images, as they are called, in every 
great town of Italy, but that some divinity or 
power is universally believed to reside in them? 
Are not all their people persuaded, and do not all 
their books testify, that these images have some- 
times moved themselves from one place to an- 
other ; have wept, talked, and wrought many 
miracles? And does not this necessarily imply 
an extraordinary power residing in them ? In 
the high street of Loretto, which leads to the 
holy house, the shops are filled with beads, cru- 
cifixes, Agnus Dei's, and all the trinkets of Po- 
pish manufacture ; where I observed printed 



128 middleton's defence of 

certificates or testimonials, affixed to each shop, 
declaring all their toys to have been touched by 
the blessed image ; which certificates are pro- 
vided for no other purpose but to humor the gen- 
eral persuasion, both of the buyer and the seller, 
that some virtue is communicated by that touch, 
from a power residing in the image. 

In one of the churches of Lucca they show an 
image of the Virgin with the child Jesus in 
her arms, of which they relate this story, "that 
a blaspheming gamester, in rage and despair, 
took up a stone and threw it at the infant; but 
the Virgin, to preserve him from the blow, which 
was levelled at his head, shifted him instantly 
from her right arm into the left, in which he is 
now held ; while the blasphemer was swallowed 
up by the earth upon the spot ; where the hole, 
which they declare to be unfathomable, is still 
kept open, and enclosed only with a grate, just 
before the altar of the image. The Virgin, how- 
ever, received the blow upon her shoulder, 
whence the blood presently issued, which is pre- 
served in a crystal, and produced with the great- 
est ceremony by the priest in his vestments, with 
tapers lighted, while all the company kiss the 
sacred relic on their knees."* Now does not the 
attestation of this miracle naturally tend to per- 
suade people, that there is an actual power re- 
siding in the image, which can defend itself from 
injuries, and inflict vengeance on all who dare 
to insult it? 

One of the most celebrated images in Italy is 

* See Mr. Wright's Travels at Lucca. 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 129 

that of St. Dominic, of Surrianum in Calabria, 
which, as their histories testify, was brought 
down from heaven about two centuries ago, by 
the Virgin Mary in person, accompanied by 
Mary Magdalene and St. Catharine. Before this 
glorious picture, as they affirm, " great numbers 
of the dead have been restored to life, and hun- 
dreds from the agonies of death ; the dumb, the 
blind, the deaf, the lame have been cured, and 
ail sorts of diseases and mortal wounds miracu- 
lously healed :" all which facts are attested by 
public notaries ; and confirmed by the relations 
of cardinals, prelates, generals, and priors of that 
order ; and the certainty of them so generally 
believed, that from the ninth of July to the ninth 
of August, the anniversary festival of the saint, 
they have always counted above a hundred 
thousand pilgrims, and many of them of the 
highest quality, who come from different parts 
of Europe to pay their devotions and make their 
offerings to this picture.* 

Aringhus, touching upon this subject, in his 
elaborate account of subterraneous Rome, ob- 
serves, "that the images of the blessed Virgin 
shine out continually by new and daily miracles, 
to the comfort of their votaries, and the confusion 
of all gainsayers. Within these few years," 
says he, "under every pope successively, some 
or other of our sacred images, especially of the 
more ancient, have made themselves illustrious, 
and acquired a peculiar worship and veneration 
by the exhibition of fresh signs; as it is notorious 

* La vie de St. Dominic, p. 599, 4to. a Paris, 1647. 



130 middleton's defence of 

to all who dwell in this city. But how can I 
pass over in silence the image of St. Dominic; 
so conspicuous at this day for its never-ceasing 
miracles; which attract the resort and admira- 
tion of the whole Christian world. This picture, 
which, as pious tradition informs us. was brought 
down from heaven about the year of our re- 
demption, 1530, is a most solid bulwark of the 
church of Christ, and a noble monument of the 
pure faith of Christians, against all the impious 
opposers of image worship. The venerable im- 
age is drawn indeed but rudely, without the help 
of art or pencil ; sketched out by a celestial 
hand ; with a book in its right, and a lily in its 
left hand : of a moderate stature, but of a grave 
and comely aspect ; with a robe reaching down 
to the heels. Those who have written its his- 
tory assert, that the painters in their attempts to 
copy it, have not always been able to take simi- 
lar copies : because it frequently assumes a dif- 
ferent air, and rays of light have been seen by 
some to issue from its countenance ; and it has 
more than once removed itself from one place to 
another. The worship therefore of this picture 
is become so famous through all Christendom, 
that multitudes of people, to the number of a 
hundred thousand and upwards, flock annually 
to pay their devotions to it, on the festival of the 
saint ; and though it be strange, which 1 have 
now related, yet what I am going to say is still 
stranger, that not only the original picture, made 
not by human, but by heavenly hands, is cele- 
brated for its daily miracles, but even the copy 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 131 

of it, which is piously preserved in this city, in 
the monastery called St. Mary's above the Mi- 
nerva, is famous also in these our days for lis 
perpetual signs and wonders, as the numberless 
votive offerings hanging around it, and the 
bracelets and jewels which adorn it testify." * 

All their apologists indeed declare, what our 
Catholic also says on this head, "that they do 
not ascribe these miracles to any power in the 
image itself, but to the power of God, who is 
moved to work them by the prayers and inter- 
cession of his saints, for the benefit of those who 
have sought that intercession before their pic- 
tures or images ; and in order to bear testimony 
to the faith and practice of the church in this 
particular article. "t But how can we think it 
possible that the Deity can be moved to exert his 
power so wonderfully for the confirmation of such 
ridiculous stories of pictures and statues sent 
down from heaven ; which while they blasphe- 
mously impute to the workmanship of saints or 
angels, or of God himself,! are yet always so 
rudely and contemptibly performed, that a mod- 
erate artist on earth would be ashamed to call 
them his own ? Or is it at all credible, that the 
saints in heaven should be as busy and ambi- 
tious as their votaries are on earth, to advance 
the peculiar honors of their several altars, by 
their continual intercessions at the throne of 

* Aring. Roma Subterran. Tom. ii. p. 464. § 13. 

tCathol. Christ, p. 251. 

t Imaginem 0z6tcvktov. Euagr. 

The God- made image. — [D.] 



132 middleton's defence of 

grace? Or that their whole care above, if they 
really have any, which reaches to things below, 
should be employed, not for the general advance- 
ment of religion and piety among men, but of 
their own private glory and worship, in prefer- 
ence to all their competitors ? No; the absur- 
dity of such notions and practices makes it ne- 
cessary to believe that they were all occasionally 
forged for the support of some lucrative scheme ; 
or to revive the expiring credit of some favorite 
superstition, which had been found highly ben- 
eficial to the contrivers of such forgeries. For 
the very effect, of which they boast, as a proof of 
the miracle, betrays the fraud ; and the multi- 
tude of pilgrims and offerings, to which they 
appeal, instead of demonstrating the truth of the 
fact, does but expose the real ground of the im- 
posture. 

But to return to my antagonist : if we should 
ask him once more, whether there was ever a 
temple in the world not purely heathenish, in 
which there were any images, ejected on altars, 
for the purpose of any religious worship what- 
soever; he must be obliged to answer in the 
negative. He would be forced likewise to con- 
fess that there were many such temples in Pagan 
Rome, and particularly the Pantheon, which re- 
mains still in Christian Rome; on whose nu- 
merous altars as there formerly stood the images 
of as many Pagan divi or idols, so there are now 
standing the images of as many Popish divi or 
saints ; to whom the present Romans pay their 
vows and offer prayers, as their inclinations sev- 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 133 

erally lead them to this or that particular altar: 
and no man will pretend to say that there is not 
the greatest conformity between the present and 
the ancient temple ; or that it would not be dif- 
ficult to furnish out a private room more exactly 
to the taste of the old Romans, than this Popish 
church stands now adorned with all the furni- 
ture of their old Paganism. 

We are informed by Plato, that there were 
images in the temples of Egypt from the earliest 
antiquity :* and it appears evidently from Scrip- 
ture that they subsisted there, as well as in Pa- 
lestine, before the time of Moses. The strict 
prohibition of them therefore to the Jews, while 
several other rites of the heathens were indulged 
to them, in condescension to their peculiar cir- 
cumstances and carnal affections, carries a strong 
intimation that images are of all things the most 
dangerous to true religion ; as tending naturally 
to corrupt it, by introducing superstition and 
idolatry into the worship of God. The Christian 
emperors,as I have intimated in my letter, strictly 
prohibited their Pagan subjects to light up can- 
dles, offer incense, or hang up garlands to sense- 
less images : for these were then reckoned the 
notorious acts of genuine Paganism? Yet we 
now see all these very acts performed every day 
in Popish countries to the images of the Popish 
saints. 

In a word, since there never was an image in 
the temple of the true God, in any age of the 
world, yet a perpetual use of them in all the 

* Plat, de Legib. L. ii. p. 656. 
12 



134 middlkton's defence of 

temples of the heathens, it is in vain to dispute 
about their origin; the thing is evident to a de- 
monstration; they must necessarily be derived 
to the present Romans, from those who always 
used, and not from those who always detested 
them ; that is, from their Pagan, not their Chris- 
tian ancestors. They may quibble therefore as 
long as they please; and talk of their decrees 
and canons, contrived to amuse the public, and 
elude the arguments of protestants, by subtle 
and specious distinctions; while every traveller 
who sees what passes at the shrine of any cele- 
brated saint, or miraculous image in Italy, will 
be convinced by ocular demonstration, that their 
people are trained, instructed, and encouraged 
to believe, that there is a divinity or power re- 
siding in those images, and that they actually 
offer up prayers and put their trust in them. 

For if there is no such belief amongst them, 
as this Catholic affirms, for what purpose do 
they expose those images so solemnly, and carry 
them about in procession, on all occasions of 
public distress ? Is there any charm in a block 
of wood or stone, to produce rain, or avert a pes- 
tilence? Or, can senseless images have any 
influence towards moving the will of God ? No ; 
their priests are not so silly as to imagine it : the 
sole end of producing them is, not to move God, 
but the populace j to persuade the deluded mul- 
titude, that there is a power in the image, that 
can draw down blessings upon them from hea- 
ven : a doctrine that repays all their pains of in- 
culcating it, by a perpetual supply of wealth 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 135 

to the treasury of the church. This therefore, 
as it appears from undeniable facts, is the uni- 
versal belief of all Popish countries; grounded, 
as they all assert, on the evidence of perpetual 
miracles, wrought by the particular agency of 
these sacred images, of which I could produce 
innumerable instances from their own books. 

§ 8. The miraculous picture of St, Mary. — 
In a collegiate church of regular canons, called 
St. Mary, of Impruneta, about six miles from 
Florence, there is a miraculous picture of the 
Virgin Mary, painted by St. Luke, and held in 
the greatest veneration through all Tuscany : 
which, as oft as that state happens to be visited 
by any calamity, or involved in any peculiar 
danger, is sure to be brought out, and carried in 
procession through the streets of Florence ; at- 
tended by the prince himself, with all the no- 
bility, magistrates, and clergy ; where it has 
never failed to afford them present relief in their 
greatest difficulties. In testimony of which they 
produce authentic acts and records, confirmed 
by public inscriptions, setting forth all the par- 
ticular benefits miraculously obtained from each 
procession ; and the several offerings made on 
that account to the sacred image, for many cen- 
turies past, down to these very times ; from the 
notoriety of which facts it became a proverb over 
Italy, that "the Florentines had got a Madonna 
which did for them whatever they pleased."* 

* Passu in proverbio per tutta Tltalia ; che i Fiorcntini ban- 
no una Madonna, che fa a lor modo. Mcmoric Istorichc ddla 
Miracolona lmmagine l tf*c. in Firen. 1714, 4to. p. 85. 



136 middleton's defence of 

Among the numerous inscriptions of this sort 
there is one in the church of Impruneta, to this 
effect: "That the sacred image being carried 
with solemn pomp into Florence, when it was 
visited by a pestilence for three years succes- 
sively, and received with pious zeal by the great 
duke, Ferdinand II., and the whole body of the 
people, who came out to meet it, and having 
marched about the city for three days in pro- 
cession, the fierceness of the pestilence began 
miraculously to abate, and soon after entirely 
ceased. Upon which the magistrates of health, 
by a general vow of the citizens, made an offer- 
ing of ten thousand ducats of gold, to be em- 
ployed for providing portions for twenty young 
women of Impruneta, to be disposed of annually 
in marriage, and placed that inscription as a 
monument of so signal a benefit. A. D. 1G33.''* 

During the time of these processions, they al- 
ways inscribe certain hymns, or prayers, or eulo- 
giums of the Virgin, over the doors and other 
conspicuous places of each church, where the 
image reposes itself for any time; in order to 
raise the devotion of the people towards the sa- 
cred object before them. In a procession made 
A. D. 1711, the following inscription was placed 
over the principal gate of one of their great 
churches — " The gate of celestial benefit. The 
gate of salvation. Look up to the Virgin herself. 
Pass into me all ye who desire me. Whosoever 
shall find me, will find life and draw salvation 

* Memorie Istoriche della Miracolosa Immagine, &-c, in 
Firen. 1714, 4to. p. 202. 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 137 

from the Lord. For there is no one who can be 
saved, O most holy Virgin, bat through thee. 
There is no one who can be delivered from evils, 
but through thee. There is no one from whom 
we can obtain mercy, but through thee." In the 
conclusion are these expressions, — u Mary in- 
deed opens the bosom of her mercy to all; so 
that the whole universe receives out of her ful- 
ness. The captive, redemption ; the sick, a 
cure: the sad, comfort ; the sinner , pardon ; the 
just, grace; the angel, joy ; the whole Trinity, 
glory."* 

Now what can we say of a devotion so ex- 
travagant and blasphemous, but that it is a re- 
vival of the old heresy of the Collyridians ;t 
maintained by a sect of silly women ; who fell 
into their foolish error or madness, as Epipha- 
nius calls it, through an excess of zeal towards 
the blessed Virgin, whom they resolved to ad- 
vance into a goddess, and to introduce the wor- 
ship of her as such into the Christian church. % 

* Janua ccelcstis beneficii. Janua Salutis. Ipsam Virgin- 
em attendite. Trail site ad me omnes qui concupiscitis me. — 
Qui me invenerit, inveniet vitam et hauriet salutem a Domino. 
Nemo enim est qui salvus fiat, O Sanctissima, nisi per Te. 
Nemo est qui liberetur a malis nisi per te. Nemo est cujus 
misereatur gratia nisi per te. 

Maria profecto omnibus misericordise sinum aperit, ut de 
plenitudine ejus accipiant Universi. Captivus redemptioncm, 
JEger curationem, Tristis consolationem, Peccator veniam, 
Justus gratiam, Angelus laetitiam, tota Trinitas gloriam. Mc- 
morie htoricke della Miracolosa Immaginc, tj'*c, in Firen. 1714, 
4to. p. 234. 

t Collyridians. — This sect, which arose in the fourth cen- 
tury, was so called from the cakes (collyridce) which th. y offered 
in honor of the Virgin. See " Dowling's History of Roman- 
ism," p. 82. 

: Epiph. adv. H«r. Vol. I. p. 1058. Edit. Par. 1622, 
12* 



139 middleton's defence of 

I cannot dismiss the story of this wonderful 
picture, without giving the reader some account 
of its origin, as it is delivered by their writers, 
not grounded, as they say, on vulgar fame, but 
on public records, and histories, confirmed by a 
perpetual series of miracles. " When the inhab- 
itants of Impruneta had resolved to build a 
church to the Virgin, and were digging the foun- 
dations of it with great zeal, on a spot marked out 
to them by heaven ; one of the laborers happened 
to strike his pickaxe against something under 
ground, from which there issued presently a 
complaining voice or groan. The workmen, 
being greatly amazed, put a stop to their work 
for a while, but having recovered their spirits 
after some pause, they ventured to open the 
place from which the voice came, and found the 
miraculous image."* 

This calls to my mind a Pagan story of the 
same stamp, and in the same country, preserved 
to us by Cicero, concerning the origin of divina- 
tion. " That a man being at plough in a cer- 
tain field of Etruria, and happening to strike his 
plough somewhat deeper than ordinary, there 
started up before him out of the furrow, a deity, 
whom they called Tages. The ploughman, 
terrified by so strange an apparition, made such 
an outcry that he alarmed all his neighbors, and 
in a short time drew the whole country around 
him ; to whom the god, in the hearing of them 
all, explained the whole art and mystery of di- 
vination : which all their writers and records 

* Epiph. adv. Haer. Vol I. p. 53, &c. 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 139 

affirmed, to be the genuine origin of that disci- 
pline, for which the old Tuscans were afterwards 
so famous." 

Now these two stories forged at different times 
in the same country, and for the same end of 
supporting an idolatrous worship, bear such a 
resemblance to each other, that every one will 
see the one to have been a bungling imitation of 
the other; and we may say of the Popish Ma- 
donna, what Cicero says of the Pagan Tages, 
'•that none can be so silly as to believe that a 
god was ever dug out of the ground; and that 
an attempt to confute such stories would be as 
silly as to believe them." * My design therefore 
in collecting them was not so much to expose 
the folly of them to my protestant readers, as to 
admonish our papists, by unquestionable facts 
and instances, drawn from the present practice 
of Rome, into what a labyrinth of folly and im- 
piety their principles will naturally lead them, 
when they are pushed to their full length, and 
exerted without reserve or restraint ; and to lay 
before them the forgeries and impostures which 
are practised in their church, to support the ab- 
surd doctrines which she imposes, as the neces- 
sary terms of Catholic communion. 

But their constant method of recurring to dif- 
ferent saints in their different exigencies, is no- 
thing else, as many writers have observed, but 
an exact copy of the Pagan superstition, ground- 
ed, on a popular belief, that their saints, like the 
old demons, have each their distinct provinces, 
* Cicero dc Divhi. ii. 23. 



140 middleton's defence of 

or prefectures, assigned to them; some over 
particular countries, cities, societies, and even 
the different trades of men ; others over the sev- 
eral diseases of the body, or the mind ; others 
over the winds, the rain, and various fruits of 
the earth.* So that God's rebuke to the aposta- 
tizing Jews, is full as applicable to the papists, 
for committing whoredoms with their idols, and 
saying, "I will go after my lovers, who give me 
my bread and my water : my wool and my flax ; 
mine oil and my drink — for they did not know 
that I gave them their corn, and wine, and oil, 
and multiplied their silver and gold which they 
prepared for Baal."t 

§ 9. Images not defensible. — Our Catholic 
proceeds to affirm that all the devotion paid to 
their saints extends no farther than to desire 
their prayers, and that the pictures and images 
of them, which we see in their churches, are no 
more than mere memorials, designed to express 
the esteem which they retain for the persons so 
represented ; or as helps to raise their affections 
to heavenly things; and that every child amongst 
them knows this to be true. Yet I have de- 
monstrated from their public inscriptions, as 
well as the explicit testimonies of their writers, 
that those images are placed by them in their 
churches, as the proper objects of religious ado- 
ration ; and that they ascribe to their divi, or 
saints, who are represented by them, the very 
same titles, powers and attributes, which the 

* Orig. con. Cels. 8, p. 239. 
t Hosea ii. 5, 7. 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 141 

heathens ascribed to their deities ; invoking 
them as tutelary divinities; as presiding over 
their temples, and the affairs of men, as most 
powerful, invincible, and always ready to help 
and relieve their votaries. All which is con- 
firmed by the constant style of their prayers, and 
the express language of their liturgies, missals, 
and breviaries, set forth at Rome by public au- 
thority : in which the Virgin is called " the mother 
of mercy, hope of the world, the only trust of 
sinners ;" and the saints addressed to under the 
titles of intercessors, protectors, and dispensers of 
grace. Maldonatus calls it " an impious and silly 
error of the protestants to think that no religious 
worship is due to any but to God." And some of 
their expurgatary indexes go so far as to ex- 
punge all those passages of the primitive fathers 
which teach, that creatures ought not to be 
adored* 

The Abbot de Marolles relates a conversation 
in which he was once engaged with a Capuchin, 
who had been employed in several missions, and 
a celebrated preacher of France ; in the presence 
of a Hugonot gentleman ; for whose sake the 
abbot took occasion to speak of images in the 
same moderate strain, in which our Catholic 
thinks fit to treat them in his present address to 
protestants; "that they were placed in their 

* Salve Regina ; Mater misericord ice, vita, dulcedo, et spes 
nostra, salve. Ad Te clamamus exules filii Evoe, &c. Ojfflc. 
Beat. Virg. Maldonat. in Mat, v, 35. Index Expurgat. Ma- 
drid, 1612. 

Hail, O queen ! mother of mercy, our life, delight, and hope, 
hail ! We cry to thee 3 exile children of Eve, &c— [D.] 



142 middleton's defence of 

churches not for the people to adore, or put their 
trust in them, but to edify their senses, by the 
representation of holy things. But the abbot's 
discourse gave offence both to the friar and the 
preacher; they insisted on a higher degree of 
veneration, urged the stories of their miraculous 
images, and the extraordinary devotion that was 
paid by the Pope, the bishops, and the whole 
church, to some of them, which had been known 
to speak, or were brought down from heaven, or 
made by the hands of apostles and angels ; or 
had been consecrated on the account of some 
particular virtues, and were carried for that rea- 
son in processions, and worshipped on altars, as 
well as the sacred relics ; whose miracles could 
not be contested by any, but obstinate heretics, 
who would sooner renounce the testimony of 
their senses, than be convinced of their errors. 
In short, the Capuchin declared that the autho- 
rity of the church was the sole rule of faith ; 
and that to resist it was a manifest rebellion, and 
worthy of the last punishment."* And this 

* Mais tout ce discours ne plut pas encore au Religieux, ni 
mesmes a M. Hersaut, qui vouloit quelque chose de plus ; pour 
preuve de quoy, l'un et l'autre mirent en avant les images mi- 
raculeuses, et marquerent mesmes les respects extraordinairies, 
que le S. Pere, les Evesques, et toute l'Eglise rendent a quel- 
ques unes, qui ont parle, ou qui sont descendues du Ciel, ou 
qui ont ete faconnees de la propre main des Apostres, et des 
Anges, ou qui sont consacrees pour quelque vertu particuliere. 
lesquelles a cause de cela se portent en procession et sont reve- 
rees sur les Autels, aussi bien que les saintes Reliques, dont les 
miracles ne peuvent estre contestez, que par les Heretiques 
opiniastres, qui combattent mesmes le tesmoignage des sens, 
quand il s'agit de la conviction de leur erreur. — Le Capucin 
estima, qu'il falloit defendre tout ce qui l'Eglise recoit ; — que 
cela seul estoit la regie de la foy : et que ce seroit une rebellion 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 143 

opinion after all. maintained by the friar, is the 
genuine notion of image worship, which prevails 
at this day in the Romish church, and especially 
in Italy, as I have fully demonstrated by the 
facts above recited. 

I have said in my letter, that several of the 
ancient heroes were more worthy of veneration 
than some of the modern saints, who have dis- 
possessed them of their shrines ; and that I 
should sooner pay divine honors to the founders 
of empires than to the founders of monasteries. 
This our author aggravates into a heavy charge 
against me ; as if I were offended to see the hea- 
then temples converted into Christian churches, 
and had actually preferred the Pagan deities, 
before the martyrs of Christ. Where, according 
to his custom, he either widely mistakes, or wil- 
fully misrepresents my meaning; for as to the 
genuine saints and martyrs of the Christian 
church, that is. all those who in past ages have 
lived agreeably to the rules of the gospel, or died 
ill the defence of it, I reverence them as highly 
as they ought to be reverenced by any Christian, 
yet shall never be induced to worship them : I 
consider them as illustrious proofs of the excel- 
lence of the Christian doctrine ; and shining ex- 
amples of piety and fortitude to all succeeding 
ages. But as for the Popish saints, I believe 
several of them to be wholly fictitious ; many 
more to have spent their lives contemptibly : and 

manifestc d'y resister ce qui ne seroit diffne de rien moins, que 
du dernier chastiment. Memoir es de M. de Marolles. par. i. 
p. 164. 



144 MIDDLETOX'S DEFENCE OF 

some of them even wickedly: and out of these 
three classes, let our author choose where he 
will ; out of the fictitious, the contemptible, or 
the wicked ; I shall venture to affirm once more, 
that I would sooner worship Romulus, or Anto- 
nine, than any of them : sooner pay my devotion 
to the founders, than to the disturbers of king- 
doms; sooner to the benefactors, than to the 
persecutors of mankind ; and this is the whole 
that I have ever meant. 

§ 10. Fictitious Saints. — But our author calls 
it a notorious falsehood to say, " that many of 
their saints were never heard of but in their le- 
gends ; or had no other merit but of throwing 
kingdoms into convulsions, for the sake of some 
gainful imposture :" yet I have produced several 
instances of the first sort, which every reasona- 
ble man must think decisive ; in the case of E vo- 
dia, St. Viar, Amphibolus, Veronica : but no such 
saints, he says, were ever honored in their 
church : by which he means nothing more, as 
he himself explains it, than that they never were 
formally canonized, and entered into the Roman 
martyrology; which is nothing to the purpose: 
since, as I have shown from unquestionable au- 
thority, they were all honored with altars and 
images, and openly worshipped in Catholic coun- 
tries, as saints and martyrs ; and that Veronica 
in particular, though the name only of a picture, 
was advanced into a person, by the authority of 
pope Urban ; and placed as such upon an altar, 
in the face of all Christendom, in St. Peter's at 
Rome. Yet all men who know any thing of 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 145 

history, either sacred or profane, must necessa- 
rily be convinced that the whole story, not only 
of the saint, but of the picture also, which they 
expose on certain festivals with the greatest 
pomp, and for the original of which different 
cities contend, is a mere cheat and forgery. 

It is a thing confessed and lamented by the 
gravest of their own communion, that the names 
and worship of many pretended saints, who 
never had a real existence, had been fraudu- 
lently imposed upon the church. The cele- 
brated Dr. John de Launoy was famous for 
clearing the calendar of several who had long 
been worshipped in France, as the tutelary saints 
of some of their principal towns : so that it used 
to be said of him, "that there never passed a 
year in which he did not pluck a saint out of 
paradise." * 

In the catacombs of Rome, which, in the 
times of heathenism was the burial place of the 
slaves, and poorer citizens, and where the bones 
of Pagans and Christians lie jumbled promis- 
cuously together, if they happen to find a little 
vial or piece of glass tinged with red, at the 
mouth of any particular hole, they take it pres- 
ently, (as the learned Montfaucon informs us,) 
for a certain proof of martyrdom ; and, by the 
help of the next inscription, that they can pick 
up from some neighboring grave-stone, presently 
create a new saint and martyr to the Popish 
church. Mabillon, as I have observed, wishes 
"that they would be more scrupulous on this 

* Bayle Diet, in Launoy. 
13 



146 middleton's defence of 

head : and not forge so many fabulous stories 
of saints, without any certain name ; nor impose 
Paganish inscriptions for Christian upon the 
church." 

Our Catholic himself, in this very work where 
he is laboring to give the most specious turn to 
every part of their worship, is forced to allow 
such a confusion and jumble among the martyrs 
and their relics, as approaches very nearly to 
what I am now affirming : he says, " that many 
of their saints having borne the same name, it 
easily happens that the relics, which belong to 
one, are attributed to another, and that there are 
many ancient martyrs, whose names at present 
are unknown, yet whose relics have all along 
been honored in the church; and that it was 
easy for the ignorance of some, or the vanity of 
others, to attribute to them the names of other 
saints." The old Athenians were called super- 
stitious by the apostle, for erecting an altar to 
the unknown God ; but our papists, we see, by 
their own confession, erect altars to unknown 
saints, and unknown relics. 

Upon the mention of these relics, I cannot 
help observing, that the superstitious veneration 
and solemn translations of them, which make 
so great a part of the Popish worship, afford an- 
other instance of a practice clearly derived to 
them from Paganism; the whole process and 
ceremonial of which, as it is exercised at this 
day, may be seen in Plutarch's account of the 
translation of the bones of Theseus, from the Isle 
of Seyms to Athens : and as this resolution was 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 147 

first suggested to the Athenians by an appari- 
tion of Theseus himself, and enjoined to them 
afterwards by the Delphic oracle; so the dis- 
covery and translation of their relics in the Ro- 
mish church j are usually grounded on some pre- 
tended vision or revelation from heaven. 

"When Cimon then had conquered the Island 
of Scyrus, where Theseus died, being very so- 
licitous, as Plutarch relates, to find out the place 
where he lay buried, and unable to procure any 
information about it, he happened to espy an 
eagle upon a rising ground, pecking the earth 
with its beak, and tearing it up with its talons ; 
and conceiving this to be a divine omen and sign 
to him, he began immediately to dig, and found 
the coffin of a man of more than ordinary size, 
with a brazen lance and sword lying by him; 
all which he took away with him into his galley, 
and transported to Athens; where the whole 
body of the people, upon notice of his arrival, 
came out to receive the sacred relics in a solemn 
and pompous procession, performing public sa- 
crifices and expressing all the same marks of 
joy, as if Theseus himself had been returning to 
them alive. They interred his bones in the 
midst of the city, where his sepulchre is still a 
sanctuary for slaves and the meaner citizens; 
Theseus having always been esteemed a par- 
ticular patron of the poor and distressed. The 
chief festival, which they celebrate annually to 
his honor, is the eighth of October ; on which 
he returned victorious from Crete with the young 
captives of Athens, yet they observe likewise 



148 middleton's defence of 

the eighth of every month as a kind of inferior 
holyday or memorial of him." * 

But to pursue the objections of our Catholic; 
he declares my account of St. Oreste, whose 
name I suppose to have been derived from the 
mountain Soracte on which his monastery now 
stands, to be ridiculous beyond measure ; yet 
Mr. Addison, who was no ridiculous author, has 
related it as a certain fact; which he borrowed 
probably from some of their own writers, or at 
least from some of the antiquaries of Rome, 
among whom I heard the same story. But if 
the notion of fictitious saints be so notoriously 
false, as he asserts it to be, let him tell us, if he 
can, in what history we may find the acts of 
those very saints whom I have named, and 
whom their church adopts as genuine, St. Oreste, 
Baccho, Quirinus, Romula, and Redempta, Con- 
cordia, Nympha, Mercurius. 

The creation of saints is become as common 
almost as the creation of cardinals; there hav- 
ing seldom been a Pope who did not add some 
to the calendar. Benedict XIII. canonized 
eight in one summer; and his successor, Clem- 
ent XII., the last Pope, four more. During 
my stay at Rome, I saw the beatification of one 
Andrew Conti, of the family of the Pope, then 
reigning, Innocent XIII.; for this is another 
source of supplying fresh saints to the church ; 
when to humor the ambition of the Pope, or the 

* Plutar. in Thes. ad fin. The English reader may find this 
story in the American (Baltimore) edition of Langhorne's 
translation of Plutarch's Lives, page 12.— [D.] 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 149 

other princes of that communion, this honor is 
conferred on some of their name and family : 
and as there must be a testimony of miracles, 
wrought by every person so canonized or beati- 
fied, either when living or dead, so I was curious 
to inquire what miracles were ascribed to this 
beatified Andrew; which 1 found to be nothing 
else but a few contemptible stories, delivered 
down by tradition, which showed only the weak- 
ness of the man, and the absurdity of believing 
that God should exert his omnipotence for the 
production of such trifles. 

As to the proof of miracles, which is essential 
to these canonizations, every one will conceive 
how easy it must be, in a function contrived to 
serve the interest of the church and the ambition 
of its rulers, to procure such a testimonial of 
them as will be sufficient for the purpose. In 
the deifications of ancient Rome, the attestation 
also of a miracle was held necessary to the act. 
In the case of Romulus, one Julius Proculus, a 
man said to be of a worthy and upright charac- 
ter, took a solemn oath, "that Romulus himself 
appeared to him, and ordered him to inform the 
senate, of his being called up to the assembly ot 
the gods, under the name of duirinus;"* and 
in the deification of the Csesars, a testimony 
upon oath of an eagle's flying out of the funeral 
pile, towards heaven, which was supposed to 
convey the soul of the deceased, was the estab- 
lished proof of their divinity. Now as these 
Pagan deifications are the only patterns in his- 

* Vid. Plutar. in vit. Romul. Dionys. Halicar. L. ii. p. 121. 
13* 



130 3iiddleton's defence of 

tory for the Popish canonizations; so the inven- 
tion of miracles is the single art in which mod- 
ern Rome is allowed to excel the ancient. 

§11. St. Thomas a Becket. — In the Jesuit's 
College at St. Omer's, the father, who showed 
us the house, happening to produce some relic, 
or memorial of St. Thomas, which he treated 
with much reverence, one of our company asked 
me what Thomas he meant? upon which I un- 
warily said, "it is Thomas Becket, who is wor- 
shipped as a great saint on this side of the wa- 
ter :" yes, sir, replied the Jesuit, with a severe 
look, " if there is any faith in history, he deserves 
to be esteemed a great saint." But I may venture 
to affirm in England, what I did not care to dis- 
pute in a college of Jesuits, that this celebrated 
Thomas had more of the rebel than of the saint 
in him ; was a prelate of a most daring, turbu- 
lent, seditious spirit ; inflexibly obstinate, insa- 
tiably ambitious, intolerably insolent; whose 
violence the Pope himself endeavored in vain to 
moderate; as it appears from such monuments 
as the Papists themselves must allow to be au- 
thentic, a collection of Becket's own letters, pre- 
served still in the Vatican, and printed some 
years ago in Brussels.* 

From these letters, I say, it appears that not 
only the king, and the whole body of his barons, 
but even the bishops, abbots, and clergy, openly 
condemned his behaviour as highly rash and 
criminal ; they charged him with being the sole 
" disturber of the peace of the kingdom: that 

* Epist. ct Vit. Div. Thorns. 2 vol. 4to. Bruxellis, 1652. 



THE LETTER FROx^I ROME. 151 

while he was making all that stir about the lib- 
erties of the church, he himself was the chief in- 
fringer of them ; that he was not ashamed to 
publish the most notorious lies in favor bf his 
own cause ; that he refused to restore to the king 
forty thousand marks, which had been commit- 
ted to him in trust; that he was guilty of the 
most detestable ingratitude to the king, whom 
he treated worse than a heathen or publican, 
though he had been raised by him from the low- 
est condition, to the highest favor, and entrusted 
by him with the command of all his dominions, 
and made his chancellor, and archbishop of Can- 
terbury, contrary to the advice of his mother, the 
empress, and the remonstrances of the nobility; 
and to the great grief and mortification of the 
whole clergy :" all which the bishops and clergy 
of the realm expressly affirm in their common 
letters, not only to the Pope, but to Becket him- 
self ; accusing him likewise of " traitorous prac- 
tices, and of using all endeavors to excite the 
king of France, and the court of Flanders, to 
enter into a war against his king and country." 
When he was cited by the king to answer for 
his maladministration, before the bishops and 
barons of the realm, he absolutely refused to ap- 
pear ; declaring himself " responsible to none but 
God ; and that as much as the soul was superior 
to the body, so much were all people obliged to 
obey him rather than the king, in all things re- 
lating to God and his church ; who had estab- 
lished bishops to be the judges and fathers of 
l: ~s themselves; and as neither law nor rea- 



152 middleton's defence of 

son allowed children to judge their parents, so 
he renounced the judgment of the king and the 
barons, and all other persons whatsoever, and 
acknowledged no judge but God and his sove- 
reign vicar on earth, the Pope." * Yet this man 
is now adored as one of the principal saints and 
martyrs of the Romish church ; whose charac- 
ter I have chosen to insist upon the more par- 
ticularly, as it will teach us by an illustrious 
example, from our own history, what kind of 
merit it is, that has exalted so many others in 
the same church, to the same honors. 

Let our Catholic tell us also, if he pleases, 
what opinion his church entertains of Garnet 
the Jesuit, who was privy to the gunpowder plot, 
and hanged for his treason ; if he dares to speak 
his mind, he will declare him to be a saint and 
martyr of Christ ; for such he is held to be at 
Rome and St. Omer's: yet all protestants will 
rank him, I dare say, among those saints whom 
I justly call the disturbers of kingdoms; and 
who merited the honor of their saintship, not by 
spreading the light of the gospel, but scattering 
firebrands and destruction through the world. 

§ 12. Transiibstantiation. — Our author can- 
not comprehend why I should bring in the ado- 
ration of the host among the other articles of 
my charge ; since, by my own confession, I find 
no resemblance of it in any part of the Pagan 
worship : but 1 have given a good reason for my 
not finding it there, which might have taught 
him also, why I brought it in ; because it was 

* La vie de Saint Thorn. Archevesque de Canterb. p. 129. 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 153 

too absurd for the practice even of the heathens, 
who thought that none could ever be so mad as 
to make it a point of religion, to eat their God. 
This I showed from the authority of Tully; 
whom I prefer therefore, he says, to the apostles 
and evangelists : as if those sacred writers had 
expressly declared the sacramental bread to be 
God ; which all protestants deny, in that gross 
and ridiculous sense, in which the Papists inter- 
pret them. But as it is not my present purpose 
to examine the real merit of Transubstantiation, 
so I shall take notice only of one argument that 
he alleges for it, which, if it has any force, must 
be allowed indeed to be conclusive; that "the 
unerring authority of the church has declared it 
to be true, and enjoined the belief of it ;" and af- 
ter such a decision, " that it is the part of an in- 
fidel, rather than a Christian, to ask how can 
this be?" 

This is the last resort of Popery ; the sum of 
all their reasoning : to resolve all religion into 
an implicit faith, and a slavish obedience to the 
authority of the church ; which by innumerable 
texts of Scripture, says our author, is declared to 
be the indispensable duty of every Christian. 
We may spare ourselves then the pains of think- 
ing and inquiring; drop the perilous task of 
studying the Scriptures ; the church, like an in- 
dulgent mother, takes all that trouble upon her- 
self; warrants her doctrines to be divine; and 
ensures our salvation, on the single condition of 
taking her word for it. But all protestants must 
see the horrible effects of such a principle ; an 



154 middleton's defence of 

Inquisition ready to satisfy all their doubts ; a 
prison and tortures prepared for those who dare 
to ask their priests, what Nicodemus asked our 
Saviour, how can these things be? Thus our 
Catholic, in mentioning the case of a protestant, 
converted to their faith, who may happen to be 
possessed still with some scruples, declares u that 
he has nothing to fear in conforming himself to 
the authority of the church, but very much, in 
making any scruple to hear and obey his spir- 
itual guides." 

hi this doctrine of Transubstantiation we see 
a remarkable instance of the prolific nature of 
error; and how one absurdity naturally begets 
another : for the first consequence of it was, to 
render one half of the sacramental institution 
superfluous, by denying the cup to the laity ; 
though our Saviour expressly commanded all 
his disciples to drink of it, and declared, that 
without drinking, they could have no life in 
them.* Yet grant them their Transubstantia- 
tion, and the conclusion is natural, as our Ca- 
tholic has deduced it ; " for whosoever," says he, 

* Matt. xxvi. 27. John vi. 53. 1 Cor. xi. 23.— In the pas- 
sage cited by Dr. Middleton, from John vi. 53, " Except ye eat 
the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no 
life in you," there is no reason to suppose that our Lord referred 
to the Supper, which was not then instituted. If he did, then 
the words would imply that a participation in the Lord's Sup- 
per w T as absolutely essential to salvation. The meaning un- 
questionably is, that without that faith in the sacrifice of 
Christ, which is represented under the significant figure of eat- 
ing his flesh and drinking his blood, a person could have no 
spiritual life in him. The true believer's life is a life of faith 
upon the Son of God, who hath loved him and given himself 
for him. — [D.] 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 155 

" receives the body of Christ, most certainly re- 
ceives his blood at the same time, since the body 
which he receives is a living body, and cannot 
be without blood. There is no taking Christ 
by pieces ; whoever receives him, receives him 
whole ; and since he is as truly and really pres- 
ent in one kind as in both, he brings with him 
consequently the same grace, when received in 
one kind, as when received in both." But if 
they were disposed to use their reason on this 
occasion, a conclusion, so contradictory to the 
express institution of the gospel, would convince 
them of the falsehood of those principles, by 
Avhich they were led into it ; and oblige them to 
distrust their premises, which have always been 
disputed, rather than reject a clear precept of 
Christ, on which there never was, or can be any 
reasonable dispute. 

As to my sixth and seventh instances of their 
Paganism, since our Catholic has offered nothing 
upon them worth the pains of considering, I 
shall refer the reader to my letter, without 
troubling him with any thing farther about 
them, and proceed to the more important article 
of their miracles. 

§ 13. Spurious Miracles, — Here he begins to 
grow warm again, and declares, "that I am al- 
ways offended with miracles, wherever I meet 
them ; and is sorry that I do not speak out in 
favor of my friends the freethinkers, and show 
the Jewish and Christian miracles to be no bet- 
ter than those of the Pagans." This is the con- 
stant refuge of baffled zealots to throw the odium 



156 middleton's defence of 

of infidelity and free thinking on those who dare 
to expose their impostures. But he hoped per- 
haps to find some even of our own church ready- 
to join with him in the cry; since he appears to 
be no stranger to the offence, which the freedom 
of this very letter had given to certain men, who 
are too apt to consider their own opinions as the 
standard of Christian faith ; and to treat even 
the defenders of our religion as deserters, if they 
do not submit to act under their direction, and 
defend it by their principles. These men im- 
agined that I had attacked the Popish miracles 
with a gayety that seemed to contemn all mira- 
cles, and particularly those of our Saviour; by 
invalidating the force of those rules which Mr. 
Leslie had established as the criterion of true 
miracles: whereas the truth of the matter is, as 
I have often declared it to my friends, that at 
the time of writing the letter I had never read 
Mr. Leslie's treatise, nor so much as knew what 
his rules were. 

My only view was to expose the forgery of 
the Popish miracles in the strongest manner that 
I was able ; and in spite of all the evidence, 
which they pretend to produce for them, to show 
that they stood upon no better ground than those 
of their Pagan ancestors. I had observed, not 
only from books, but from experience, what these 
cavillers perhaps were not so well apprized of, 
that the pretence of miracles was the grand sup- 
port of the Romish church, and what gave a 
sanction to all their other frauds ; that their con- 
stant appeal to a divine power, exerting itself 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 157 

miraculously amongst them, gave them not only 
their chief advantage against protestants, but 
furnished the deists also with the most obvious 
arguments against revelation itself : for "these 
pious cheats," as Mr. Leslie says, "are the sorest 
disgraces of Christianity; which have bid the 
fairest of any one contrivance, to overturn the 
certainty of the miracles of Christ, and the whole 
truth of the gospel, by putting them all on the 
same foot." * To destroy the authority there- 
fore of these cheats, was to sap the foundation 
of Popery, and overturn the main pillar on which 
its power subsists : which was the real motive 
of my dwelling longer on this than on any other 
article, as our Catholic observes, as well as of 
treating it with that freedom which alarmed 
even some of our protestants. 

That my sentiments therefore on this head 
may neither be mistaken, nor suspected ; and 
that I may give satisfaction, as far as I am able, 
to all, whom, by any freedom of expression, I 
may possibly have offended, either in this, or in 
any other of my writings, I take this occasion to 
declare ; that I look upon miracles, when ac- 
companied with all the circumstances proper to 
persuade us of the reality of the facts said to be 
performed, and of the dignity of the end for 
which they were performed, to be the most de- 
cisive proofs that can be given, of the truth and 
divinity of any religion. This was evidently 
the case of the Jewish and of the Christian mir- 
acles ; wrought in such a manner as could leave 

* Sec Leslie's Short Method with the Deists, p. 24. 
14 



158 middleton's defence of 

no doubt upon the senses of those who were the 
witnesses of them ; and for the noblest end, for 
which the Deity can be conceived to interpose 
himself; the universal good and salvation of 
man. For the Jewish and Christian dispensa- 
tions are but different parts of one and the same 
scheme; mutually illustrating and confirming 
each others authority: and from this view of 
them, in which they should always be consid- 
ered, as necessarily connected, and dependent 
on each other, we see the weakness of that ob- 
jection, commonly made to the Mosaic part, on 
the account of its being calculated for the use 
only of a peculiar people ; whereas in truth, it 
was the beginning, or first opening of an uni- 
versal system ; which, from the time of Moses, 
was gradually manifested to the world by the 
successive missions of the prophets, till that ful- 
ness of time or coming of the Messiah, when life 
and immortality were brought to light by the 
gospel, or the chief good and happiness of man 
perfectly revealed to him. 

That miracles have ever been thought the 
most authentic proofs of a divine mission, seems 
to be declared by the sense of all nations : since 
there never was a religion pretending to be di- 
vine, which did not support that pretension by 
an appeal to them : yet the innumerable forger- 
ies of this sort, which have been imposed upon 
mankind in all ages, are so far from weakening 
the credibility of the Jewish and Christian mir- 
acles, that they strengthen it. For how could 
we account for a practice so universal, of forging 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 159 

miracles for the support of false religions, if on 
some occasions they had not actually been 
wrought for the confirmation of a true one? 
Or how is it possible, that so many spurious 
copies should pass upon the world, without some 
genuine original, from which they were drawn; 
whose known existence and tried success might 
give an appearance of probability to the coun- 
terfeit? Now of all the miracles of antiquity, 
there are none that can pretend to the character 
of originals, but those of the Old and New Tes- 
tament ; which though the oldest by far, of all 
others, of which any monuments now remain in 
the world, have yet maintained their credit to 
this day, through the perpetual opposition and 
scrutiny of ages ; whilst all the rival productions 
of fraud and craft have long ago been succes- 
sively exploded, and sunk into utter contempt. 
An event that cannot reasonably be ascribed to 
any other cause but to the natural force and ef- 
fect of truth, which, though defaced for a time 
by the wit, or depressed by the power of man, 
is sure still to triumph in the end, over all the 
false mimicry of art, and the vain efforts of hu- 
man policy. 

As to Mr. Leslie's rules of distinguishing the 
true from false miracles, I have lately perused 
and considered them ; and whatever force they 
may be supposed to have, I would not advise an 
apologist for Christianity to trust his cause to 
that single issue. Mr. Leslie himself does not 
do it ; but suggests several other arguments for 
the divinity of our religion, so strong and con- 



160 middleton's defence of 

elusive that even miracles themselves, as he de- 
clares, would not be sufficient to overrule them.* 
His marks, however, are so far certainly good, 
that no pretence of miracles can deserve any at- 
tention without them ; yet it does not necessarily 
follow that all the miracles in which they may 
be found, ought to be received as true ; since as 
far as I have been able to observe, within the 
compass of my reading, several might be pro- 
duced both from Popery and Paganism, which 
seem to possess them all, and are yet unques- 
tionably false. 

I have charged the Popish church in my letter 
with many instances of forged miracles, to which 
this author does not think fit to make any par- 
ticular reply, but contents himself with a general 
answer, which must needs be thought curious: 
for he observes, that whether the miracles which 
I have pitched upon be true or false, there is no- 
thing at least heathenish in them ; and conse- 
quently nothing that shows the conformity, 
which I pretend to demonstrate, between Popery 
and Paganism. Which is in effect to say, that 
allowing them to be forged, yet they were not 
forged by Pagan, but by Christian priests ; not 
for the purposes of Pagan, but of Christian su- 
perstition, so that I cannot with any propriety 
call them heathenish. But are they not all 
copied from the patterns of Paganism? Are 
they not applied to the same purposes of fraud 
and delusion ; to keep their people in a slavish 
subjection to an idolatrous worship ; and to ac- 

* See Leslie's Short method, p. 21. 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 161 

quire wealth and power to the priesthood ? This 
certainly is downright Paganism, and the most 
detestable part of it. 

He proceeds however to assert with his usual 
gravity, "that God has been pleased in every 
age, to work most evident miracles in their 
church, by the ministry of his saints ; in raising 
the dead to life ; in curing the blind and the 
lame ; in casting out devils ; in healing invete- 
rate diseases in a moment, attested by the most 
authentic monuments ; which will be a standing 
evidence to all nations, that the church in which 
they are wrought, is not that idolatrous Pagan 
church which I pretend it to be, but the true 
spouse of Christ." This is the constant voice of 
all the Romish apologists; that the Catholicism 
of their church is demonstrated by the notoriety 
of their miracles.* But since the end of all mir- 
acles is to convert unbelievers ; if their miracles 
be really wrought by the power of Christ, why 
are they not wrought, like the miracles of Christ, 
in open daylight ; in the midst of unbelieving 
nations ; not for the acquisition of gain or power 
to particular persons, but for the benevolent ends 
of conferring some general good, by reforming 
men's lives, enlightening their understandings, 
and promoting truth and peace and charity 
amongst men? Why are none of them wrought 
in protestant countries, for whose conversion 

* Nostram Ecclesiam demonstrabimus esse vcram Ecclesi- 
am miraculis. Bellarm. cle Eccles. Milit. L. iv. c. 14. 

" We will prove our church to be the true church by mira- 
cles." (Cited from Cardinal Bellar mine.) — [D.] 
14* 



1G2 middleton's defence of 

they are always alleged; but huddled over 
among their own bigoted votaries: prepared by 
an habitual credulity, to receive any imposture 
that their priests can invent ?* 

While St. Thomas's shrine flourished atCan- 
terbury, his saintship was demonstrated by per- 
petual miracles; in which, as the historians of 
those times tell us, he far outdid not only all other 
saints, but even our Saviour himself. There 
were two volumes of them preserved in the 
church of Canterbury ; and another book in 
France, in which there was an account of two 
hundred and seventy. Peter of Blois, a celebra- 
ted writer of that age, after drawing a parallel 
between Thomas the apostle, and Thomas the 
martyr, says, ' ; I do not pretend to compare a 
martyr with an apostle ; for an apostle is greater ; 

* M. de Marolles takes occasion to observe, from a fact which 
happened in Paris, 1644, how easily people, possessed with a 
superstitious regard to miracles, can persuade themselves that 
they see what in truth has no existence. The story is this : a cer- 
tain man, out of a mere whim, or with design perhaps to try his 
pistol, shot it off against a sign in the street, on which the Vir- 
gin Mary was painted. The neighborhood being alarmed, ran 
out to see what was the matter; and observing the Virgin to 
be pierced through with the bullet, conceived it to be done by 
some heretic or blasphemer, in open defiance of their religion, 
and amazed at so daring an impiety, fancied that they saw drops 
of blood issue from the wound : of which the whole multitude 
was so strongly convinced, that there were thousands ready to 
depose that they had seen it with their own eyes : the story be- 
came famous, and a copper-plate of it was printed ; till being 
ridiculed by men of sense, and found to be wholly imaginary, 
the copper-plate was ordered to be suppressed, and the miracle 
fell gradually into contempt. But if it had not happened in a 
country where the protestants at that time were very numerous, 
it might have been stamped perhaps for as genuine a miracle 
as many others of the same coinage, which I have taken notice 
of in the present work. 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 163 

but it is glorious for us to have a martyr, who 
bears the name of an apostle, and who equals or 
surpasses him in his miracles.* That great apos- 
tle cannot take it amiss that the Holy Spirit 
should enable others to work greater wonders, 
and in greater number than him : since the Lord 
both of the apostles and martyrs is content to be 
outdone by them himself in this particular : ye 
shall do, says he, not only these works, that I 
do ; but greater works than these shall ye do." f 
Which prediction, as they declare, was literally 

* John of Salisbury, who lived at the time, with a great re- 
putation of learning and integrity, and wrote Becket's life, 
whose friend and disciple he was, speaking of the place and 
manner of his burial, says, " Where to the glory of God many 
and great miracles are now wrought by him, the people flocking 
thither in crowds, that they may see in others, and feel also in 
themselves, the power and mercy of him, who is ever wonderful 
and glorious in his saints. For in the place on which he suf- 
fered, and where his body likewise was deposited that night 
before the great altar ; and also where he was at last buried, the 
paralytic are healed; the blind see; the deaf hear ; the dumb 
speak ; the lame walk ; the devils are cast out ; all who are sick 
of fevers, or other diseases, are cured ; and what was never 
heard of in the days of our fathers, the dead are raised. See 
Vit. S. Tliomcz Epistolis prcefix. Vol. i. 142." 

Pope Alexander, the third of that name, in a letter to the 
church of Canterbury upon the subject of Thomas's canoniza- 
tion, about four years after his death, says, — the whole body of 
the faithful must necessarily rejoice to hear of the wonderful 
works of the holy and reverend man Thomas, your late arch- 
bishop. But you must needs be filled with a more exalted joy, 
who behold his miracles with your own eyes, and whose church 
has the peculiar honor of possessing his most sacred remains. 
We on our part having considered the glory of his merits, by 
which his life was made so illustrious, and having received full 
and certain information of his miracles, not only from common 
fame, but from the testimony of our beloved sons, Albertus and 
Theoduinus, cardinal priests and apostolic legats, and of a great 
number of other persons, have solemnly canonized the afore- 
said archbishop, &c. lb. p. 170. 

t John xiv. 12. 



164 middleton's defence of 

fulfilled by St. Thomas: '-Whose blood being 
collected with care immediately after his death, 
not only cured all distempers, but raised even 
great numbers of the dead to life : and when the 
quantity was foun 1 insufficient for the demand 
that was made of it, they were forced to supply 
it with water : the least drop of which, when 

ged with the martyr's blood, and administered 
to the sick, or infused into the mouths of the 
dead, had all the same effects: so that it was 
sent abroad into all parts of the Christian world 
as an infallible cure for all kinds of disease-. 

The fame oi these miracles drew kings and 
princes from abroad : and infinite crowds at 
home, with daily offerings to his shrine: but 
this harvest was no sooner over, than the power 
of the saint fell with the gain of the pri>. 
and all his i - ceased, when the honor of 

his altar stood most in need of their support : so 
that the place where he was formerly worship- 
ped, and where such mighty wonders were once 
wrought " shown as a monument only of 

the folly and superstition of our ancestors. But 
though he works no miracles in England, where 
his bones lie deposited ; he works them still in 
foreign countries, and will continue to do so. as 
long as there is a Popish church and a priest- 
hood, who find their interest in supporting them. 
For. as Lac:antius justly observes. - among those 
who seek power and gain from their religion, 
there will never be wanting an inclination to 
forge and to lie for it."'~ 
* La vie i: $:.Th:rr. r.D. t Lactan. defals.relig. i. 1 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 165 

They tell us indeed of many miracles of the 
greatest kind, wrought by their missionaries in 
India : but they all rest upon no other authority 
than the suspected relations of those missiona- 
ries; and are even contradicted by some of their 
gravest writers. A royal professor of Salamanca, 
in one of his public lectures, says, u it does not 
appear to me, that the Christian faith has 
been propounded to the Indians in such a man- 
ner as would reasonably induce them to receive 
it ; for I hear of no miracles performed amongst 
them, nor of such examples of the Christian life 
as there ought to be ; but on the contrary, of 
much scandal and impiety." Another learned 
Jesuit, who had spent many years among the 
Indians, in a treatise on the method of convert- 
ing them, says, c; What signifies all our preach- 
ing? What stress can we lay upon it? We 
work no miracles."* 

But among all the boasted miracles of these 
missionaries, they have never so much as pre- 
tended to the gift of tongues ; which is the first 
thing necessary to the conversion of barbarous 
nations; and without which all their preaching, 
and even miracles themselves would be useless. 
Yet St. Xaverius himself, the apostle of the In- 
dies, and one of their great saints and workers 
of miracles, laments, in several of his letters, the 
insuperable difficulties which he had to struggle 
with in his mission, and his incapacity of doing 
any good in those countries, for the want of this 
gift. And in Japan particularly, where, accord- 
* Hospinian de Origin. Jesuitar. p. 230. 



166 middleton's defence of 

ing to his account a plentiful harvest was 
open to him, and great numbers disposed to be- 
come Christians; "God grant," says he, "that 
I may soon learn their language, so as to be able 
to explain things divine, and do some service at 
last to the Christian cause. For at present in- 
deed, I am nothing better than a statue among 
them ; and while they are talking and inquiring 
many things about me, am quite dumb through 
my ignorance of their tongue: but I am now 
acting the boy again in learning the elements 
of it."* 

Sir Thomas Roe, in a letter to the archbishop 
of Canterbury from the court of the great Mogul, 
relates a fact very applicable to our present sub- 
ject ; " that the Jesuit's house and church in that 
country happening to be burnt, the crucifix re- 
mained untouched, which was given out as a 
miracle. The king called for the Jesuit, and 
questioned him about it ; but he answered am- 
biguously. The king then asked, whether he 
did not desire to convert him ; and being an- 
swered in the affirmative, replied, You speak of 
your great miracles, and of many done in the 
name of your Prophet ; if you will cast the cru- 
cifix into a fire before me, and it does not burn, 
I will become a Christian. The Jesuit refused 

* Itaque cum neque ilii meam, neque ego illorum linguam 
intelligerem, &c. Xaverii. Epist. L. v. Sane laboriosum est, 
eorum, quibuscum verseris, funditus ignorare sermonem. lb. 
i. 14. Faxit Deus, lit ad divinarum explicationem rerum, Ja- 
ponicam linguam condiscamus quam primum. Turn demum 
aliquam Christiana? rei navabimus operam. Nam nunc qui- 
dem inter eos tanquam mutae quaedam statuae versamur, &c. 
lb. L. iii. 5. 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 167 

the trial as unjust ; answering that God was not 
tied to the call of man ; that it was a sin to tempt 
him ; and that he wrought miracles according 
to his own will; yet he offered to cast himself 
into the fire, as a proof of his own faith, which 
the king would not allow. Upon this, there 
arose a great dispute, begun by the Prince ; a 
stiff Mahometan, and hater of Christians ; who 
urged that it was reasonable to try our religion 
after this manner ; but withal, that if the cruci- 
fix did burn, then the Jesuit should be obliged 
to turn Moor. He alleged examples also of mir- 
acles said to be wrought for less purposes than 
the conversion of so mighty a king ; and spoke 
scornfully of Jesus Christ." Yet nothing could 
move the Jesuit to expose the authority of his 
religion to the hazard of so dangerous a trial.* 

But as in the case of all beneficial impostures, 
the security of the managers is apt to push them 
at last to an extravagance that betrays the whole 
cheat, so it has happened in the affair of the Po- 
pish miracles ; which have been carried to such 
a height of impudence and absurdity as renders 
them wholly contemptible; while all their greater 
saints, and especially the founders of the monas- 
tic orders, St. Francis, St. Dominic, &c, are pre- 
ferred, not only to the apostles, but to Christ 
himself, for the number and importance of their 
miracles; many of which are authorized by the 
bulls of Popes, condemning all as heretics who 
do not believe them : though they are all pre- 

* Sec Collection of Travels published by Churchill, p. 805, 
606. 



168 middleton's defence of 

tended to be wrought for no other end but the 
propagation of enthusiasm and monkery, and 
the confirmation of certain doctrines and rites, 
which are not only useless, but apparently hurt- 
ful to mankind. 

If any such miracles therefore were ever 
wrought, of which there is the greatest reason 
to doubt, we must necessarily ascribe them to 
the power of the devil : endeavoring by such de- 
lusions to draw men away from the worship of 
the true God. This we are warranted to think 
probable, by the principles of our religion, and 
the authority of the primitive fathers ; who ex- 
hort us on all such occasions to try the miracles 
by their end and tendency, and the nature of 
that doctrine which is proposed to be established 
by them : for though miracles carry the strong- 
est presumption, as I have said, of the divinity 
of a doctrine in whose favor they are alleged, 
yet they are intended chiefly to rouse the atten- 
tion of the world to the preacher or prophet who 
pretends to perform them, that his commission 
may be openly examined, whether it be of God 
or not. 

The Jesuit Maldonatus, in his Comment on 
Matt. vii. 22, observes, "That St. Chrysostom, 
Jerom, Euthemius, Theophylact, prove by sev- 
eral instances, that real miracles had been per- 
formed by those who were not Catholic Chris- 
tians." St. Chrysostom declares, " that miracles 
are proper only to excite sluggish and vulgar 
minds; that men of sense have no occasion for 
them; and that they frequently carry some un- 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 169 

toward suspicion along with them." * " We are 
to take notice," says St. Jerom, " that some are 
said to have the gifts of the Spirit who do not hold 
the truth of the gospel, which may serve to si- 
lence those heretics, who if they can but work a 
miracle, fancy presently that they have demon- 
strated the truth of their faith." t " If miracles," 
says St. Austin, "are wrought in the Catholic 
church, its Catholicism is not thereby manifested, 
because miracles are wrought in it ; but the mir- 
acles themselves are to be received because they 
are wrought in a church that is Catholic." And 
Theodoret tells us, "that we are commanded 
not to give credit to them, when the performers 
of them teach things contrary to true piety." t 

If agreeably then to the injunctions of the 
apostles and primitive fathers, we sit down to 
examine the pretended miracles of Rome, we 
shall find them always the most numerous, and 
the most confidently attested, in proportion to the 
absurdity of the doctrine or practice in whose 
favor they are alleged ; as in the case of tran- 
substantiation, purgatory, the worship of images, 
relics, crucifixes, indulgences, and all the tricks 
of monkery ; as if miracles were of no other use 
but to subvert the reason and senses of mankind 
and confound all the distinctions between right 
and wrong: but if there be any rule of judging 
of their reality, or any power in man to discern 
truth from falsehood, we must necessarily con- 

* Vide Chrysost. Oper. Edit. Benedict. T. v. 271 ; a. 376 ; 
b. T. viii. 296 ; a. 205, 455. 

t Vid. Hieron. in Galat. iii. Oper. T. iv. p. 251. Edit. Bened. 
1 Vid. Hospin. de doctrina Jesuit, p. 388. 
15 



170 dleton's defence of 

elude, from the nature and end of the Popish 
miracles, that whatever testimonies may he 
brought to support them, they were all, without 
exception, either wrought by wicked spirits, or 
forged by wicked men. 

§ 14. Conclusion. — I have now run through 
every thing that seemed worthy of any notice in 
my adversary's preface ; where I have the sat- 
isfaction to observe, that though he accuses me 
so freely of slander and falsehood, yet he has not 
denied so much as one of the numerous facts on 
which I ground my charge of their Paganism. 
It was upon the strength of these facts, that I 
first offered my letter to the judgment of the pub- 
lic, and the favorable reception which it has 
met with shows that it is not thought trifling, 
and foreign to the purpose, as he affirms it to be ; 
but pertinent and decisive of the question which 
it professes to illustrate. It is a folly therefore 
to attack the credit of it, till he comes prepared 
to overthrow the facts on which it is built ; for 
while these are allowed to be firm, the inference 
is undeniable, "that Popery has borrowed its 
principal ceremonies and doctrines from the rit- 
uals of Paganism." 

The truth of this charge is so evident to all, 
who know any thing of antiquity, that though 
a missionary, as we may imagine, would be glad 
to conceal it even from Papists, and much more 
from Protestants, whom he is endeavoring to 
convert, yet all their own writers, who have any 
candor and learning, make no scruple to ac- 
knowledge it. M. de Marolles informs us how 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 171 

he once surprised a great archbishop of France, 
by a frank declaration of it : which he after- 
wards demonstrated to him at large, by a par- 
ticular deduction of it through many of the same 
instances on which I have insisted in my letter.* 
The learned Du Choul also thus concludes his 
book on the religion of the old Romans : " If we 
consider the case attentively, we shall find very 
many institutions of our religion to have been 
borrowed from the ceremonies of the Egyptians 
and the Gentiles — all which our priests now 
make use of in our mysteries, by referring to the 
only true God, Jesus Christ, what the ignorance, 
false religion, and senseless superstition of the 
Pagans had applied to their gods, and to mortal 
men after their consecration." t 

Our Catholic however concludes his work in 
a very different style : and in a kind of triumph 
for an imagined victory, undertakes by my own 
way of reasoning, to demonstrate the same con- 
formity between the English and Roman church 
which I have attempted to show between Popery 
and Paganism ; from the number of observances 
which our church still retains from the old re- 
ligion of Rome : in consequence of which, he 
says, u if my argument be right, our Protestancy 
at last will be found to be nothing better than 
heathenish idolatry." But if we recollect the 
definition which I have given above, of Popery, 
the question will be reduced to a short issue ; by 
considering only whether any of those particu- 

* Memoircs de Marolles, par. ii. p. 209. 
t De religione Vetcr. Romanor. ad fin. 



172 middleton's defence of 

lars which prove their religion to be Paganish, 
are retained still in ours ; whether we have any 
incense, holy water, or lamps in our churches 
any votive offerings hanging round our pillars 
any miraculous images ; any adoration of saints 
any altars in the streets, the waysides, and tops 
of hills : any processions; miracles, or monkery 
amongst us : if after all our reformation, we re- 
tain any of these, we are so far undoubtedly as 
criminal as they ; but if none of them can be 
found upon us, we are clear at least from all that 
Pagan idolatry which glares out so manifestly 
from every part of the Popish worship. 

All that he can object to us on this head, 
amounts to no more than this : " that there are 
several observances retained in our sacred offices 
which we use in common with the church of 
Rome." We own it : but take them all to be such 
as we may retain with innocence. We profess 
to retain all that is truly Christian ; all that is 
enjoined by the gospel, or by just inference de- 
ducible from it. But if besides all this, they can 
discover any thing amongst us that they can 
claim as their own, or that may properly be 
called Popish ; I should willingly resign it to 
them; and consent to any expedient that may 
remove us farther still from Popery, and unite us 
more closely with all sober Protestants. But 
whether any thing of this sort be remaining in 
our present establishment ; or how far any of 
the instances which he declares to have been 
borrowed from Rome, may want a review or far- 
ther reformation, as it is not the part of a pri- 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 173 

vate man to determine, so I shall refer it, as I 
ought, to the judgment of my superiors. But it 
is high time to put an end to the reader's trouble, 
to which I shall beg leave only to add the fol- 
lowing anonymous letter, which has some rela- 
tion to my present subject, and was sent to me 
by the post, while I was employed on the life of 
Cicero. 

"Sir, — You are desired by one of your sub- 
scribers, instead of amusing yourself with wri- 
ting the life of Cicero, to answer the Catholic 
Christian, written (as the author declares) in an- 
swer to, and in order to show your false reason- 
ings in your comparison of the Popish and Pa- 
gan ceremonies of religion — this Catholic Chris- 
tian abuses the Protestant religion, taxes its di- 
vines with false translations and quotations out 
of Scripture, which he pretends they do not un- 
derstand, or misapply, to make out their own 
heretical doctrines. Such scandalous reproaches 
brought upon yourself, and also upon the Pro- 
testant religion by your writings, make it incum- 
bent on you to wipe off these stains, which by 
your means are contracted, before you enter up- 
on any other subject. 

"lam yours, &c." 

"P. S. It had been honesterand fairer to have 
answered the book, than to have complained to 
the bishop of London against the printer and 
got him put into prison." 

I do not know how far my unknown corres- 
pondent will think himself obliged to me for 

15* 



174 middleton's defence of 

performing the task that he prescribes, of defend- 
ing my letter from Rome, from the cavils of the 
Catholic Christian: I am in hopes, however, 
that my pains may be of some use, as well to 
admonish all serious Papists of the fraud and 
foppery of their own worship, as to deter Protes- 
tants from running over to a church so notori- 
ously corrupt and heathenish. As to the charge 
intimated in the postscript, of procuring the im- 
prisonment of the printer, instead of answering 
the author, it would have left indeed a just re- 
proach upon me, if there had been any truth in 
it ; but if any man has been imprisoned, or put 
to any trouble, on the account of that book, I de- 
clare that I am an utter stranger to it ; that I 
have not the honor to be known to the bishop of 
London ; and that no personal provocation what- 
soever could induce me to desire the imprison- 
ment of any man for the sake of his religion. 

My aversion to Popery is grounded, not only 
on its Paganism and idolatry, but on its being 
calculated for the support of despotic power, 
and inconsistent with the genius of a free gov- 
ernment. This I take to be its real character; 
which I do not however extend to the particular 
professors of it ; many of whom I know to be 
men of great probity, politeness, and humanity; 
who through the prejudice of education, do not 
either see the consequences of what they are 
trained to profess, or through a mistaken point 
of honor, think it a duty to adhere to the religion 
of their ancestors. With these I can live, not 
only in charity, but in friendship ; without the 



THE LETTER FROM ROME. 175 

least inclination to offend them any farther, than 
by obstructing all endeavors to introduce a reli- 
gion amongst us which would necessarily be 
ruinous to the liberty of our country. Thus 
much I thought myself obliged to say upon the 
occasion of the foregoing letter, that while the 
Papists look upon me as an enemy, they may 
consider me at least as a fair one ; an enemy to 
the idolatrous and slavish principles of their 
church ; but free from all prejudice or enmity to 
their persons. 



APPENDIX A.— Page 97. 

ST. JANUARIUS AND THE FRENCH GENERAL. 

An amusing circumstance occurred in connection 
with this pretended miracle of the melting of the 
blood of St. Januarius, at the time of the invasion of 
Italy by the troops of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

In order to excite the populace of Naples against 
the French, the Popish priests, through the medium 
of the confessional, and in other ways, had contrived 
to circulate the impression among the people, that 
St. Januarius was incensed against the foreign in- 
vaders, and that the phial of blood would show the 
anger of the Saint, by refusing to liquify. On the 
appointed day, the blood was exposed as on former 
occasions to the adoration of the multitude, but true 
to the predictions of the priests, the Saint was angry, 
and the blood remained congealed. The supersti- 
tious multitude, unsuspicious of the imposture prac- 
tised on them by their priests, and deprived of their 
expected miracle, were upon the point of rising en 
masse upon the impious French, who had so deeply 
offended their Saint. 



178 APPENDIX A. 

The French commander, hereupon, planted can- 
non before the church of St. Januarius, and troops 
of soldiers in the principal streets. Having station- 
ed cannoneers, with lighted matches ready to fire 
them at the word of command, he then issued a spe- 
cial order to the priests in charge of the miraculous 
phial of blood, that if in ten minutes the Saint did 
not repent of his obstinacy, and perform his usual 
miracle, the church should be fired upon, and the 
city should be reduced to ruins. 

It was a critical moment. Five minutes of the 
precious ten had passed away, and the Saint yet con- 
tinued obstinate. The cannoneers were just ready 
to advance with their matches, the multitude were 
looking on in anxious expectation, when (mirabile 
dictu!) the Saint relented just in time, and the blood 
was seen to melt ! The multitude rent the air with 
their shouts. The church, the image, and the blood 
of the Saint were spared for future exhibitions ; and 
the priests returned to their homes mortified and cha- 
grined at having, at least once in their lives, been 
compelled to perform their well-practised jugglery 
in spite of themselves. 



APPENDIX B.— Page 107. 

RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN MODERN PAGANISM AND POPERY. 
BY REV. EUGENIO KINCAID. 

The following striking parallel between the sys- 
tem of modern Paganism which prevails in the Bur- 
man Empire, called Bhoodism, and Popery, was 
communicated to the editor by the Rev. Eugenio 
Kincaid, for thirteen years a most useful and suc- 
cessful missionary in Burmah, in reply to a letter of 
inquiry on this subject. 

" Dear Bro. Dowling — In answer to your letter 
making inquiries relative to the resemblances which 
I had observed between Bhoodism and Popery, while 
laboring as a missionary in Burmah, I would reply 
as follows : 

" Bhoodism prevails over all Burmah, Siam, the 
Shan Principalities, and about one-third of the Chi- 
nese empire. Gaudama was the last Bhood, or the 
last manifestation of Bhood, and his relics and im- 
ages are the objects of supreme adoration over all 
Bhoodist countries. In passing through the great 
cities of Burmah, the traveller is struck with the 
number and grandeur of the temples, pagodas and 
monasteries, as also with the number of idols and 
shaven-headed priests. 



180 APPENDIX B. 

Worship of images , relics, and saints * — " Pago- 
das are solid structures of masonry, and are wor- 
shipped because within their bare walls are deposit- 
ed images or relics of Gaudama. The temples are 
dedicated to the worship of Gaudama ; in them 
thrones are erected, on which massy images of Gau- 
dama are placed ; in some of the larger temples are 
the images of five hundred primitive disciples who 
were canonized about the time or soon after the death 
of Gaudama. 

Bhoodist monasteries. — " The monasteries are the 
abode of the priests, and the depositories of the sa- 
cred volumes, with their endless scholia and com- 
mentaries. These monasteries are the schools and 
colleges of the empire. They are open to all the 
boys of the kingdom, rich and poor. No provision 
is made for the education of girls. 

Bhoodist monks with shaven heads. — Vow of cell- 
bacy, 8fC. — " Priests are monks, as monasticism is 
universal ; they take the vow of poverty and celi- 
bacy — their heads shaved and without turbans, and, 
dressed in robes of yellow cloth, they retire from 
society, or, in the language of their order, retire to 
the wilderness. Henceforth, they are always ad- 
dressed as lords or saints, and over the entire popu- 
lation they exert a despotic influence. Priests, 
dead and alive, are worshipped the same as idols 

* These titles in italics, by which the various parts of the 
article are distinguished, have been added to Mr. Kincaid's let- 
ter by the editor. 



APPENDIX B. 161 

and pagodas, because they are saints, and have ex- 
traordinary merit. 

Bhoodist rosaries. Prayers in an unknown tongue. 
— " All devout Bhoodists, whether priests or people, 
male or female, use a string of leads, or rosary, in 
the recitation of their prayers — and their prayers 
are in the unknown tongue, called Pali, a language 
that has ceased to be spoken for many hundred 
years, and was never the vernacular of Burmah. 

Acts of merit. — " The frequent repetition of 
prayers with the rosary, fasting, and making offer- 
ings to the images are meritorious deeds. Celibacy 
and voluntary poverty is regarded as evidence of 
the most exalted piety. To build temples, pagodas 
and monasteries, and purchase idols, are meritorious 
acts. 

Burning of wax candles in the daytime. — " The 
burning of wax tapers and candles of various colors, 
both day and night, around the shrines of Gaudama, 
is universal in Bhoodist countries, and is taught as 
highly meritorious. Social prayer is unknown — 
each one prays apart, and making various prostra- 
tions before the images, deposits upon the altar of- 
ferings of fruit and flowers. 

The Bhoodist Lent. — Priests confessing each other. 
— " The priests are required to fast every day after 
the sun has passed the meridian till the next morn- 
ing. Besides this, there is a great fast once a year, 
continuing four or five weeks, in which all the peo- 
16 



182 APPENDIX B. 

pie are supposed to live entirely on vegetables and 
fruits. During this great fast, the priests retire 
from their monasteries, and live in temporary booths 
or tents, and are supposed to give themselves more 
exclusively to an ascetic life. At a certain time in 
the year, the priests have a practice of confessing 
and exorcising each other. This takes place in a 
small building erected for the purpose over running 
water. 

The Bhoodist priesthood and Pope. — " There are 
various grades of rank in the priesthood, and the 
most unequivocal submission in the lower to the 
higher orders is required. Tha-iha-na-bing is the 
title of the priest who sits on the highest ecclesiasti- 
cal throne in the empire (and thus corresponds to 
the Pope among Romanists). He is Primate, or 
Lord Archbishop of the realm — receives his appoint- 
ment from the King ; and from the Tha-tha-na-bing 
(or Pope) emanate all other ecclesiastical appoint- 
ments in the kingdom, and its tributary principali- 
ties. He lives in a monastery built and furnished 
by the King, which is as splendid as gold and silver 
can make it. 

Bhoodist defences against idolatry the same as the 
excuses of Romanists for the worship of images. — 
" I should observe that intelligent, learned Bhoodists 
(like some Romanists) deny that they worship the 
images and relics of Gaudama, but only venerate 
them as objects that remind them of Gaudama, the 



APPENDIX B. 183 

only object of supreme adoration — but the number 
of Bhoodists who make this distinction is very small. 

Striking resemblance between the worship of a 
Bhoodist temple and a Roman Catholic cathedral. — 
" Often, when standing in a great Burman temple, 
and looking round upon a thousand worshippers pros- 
trating themselves before images, surrounded by wax 
candles, uttering prayers in a dead language, each 
one with a rosary in hand, and the priests with long, 
flowing robes and shaven heads, I have thought of 
what I have witnessed in the Roman Catholic Ca- 
thedral in Montreal, and it has required but a very 
small stretch of the imagination to suppose myself 
transported to the opposite side of the globe, looking 
not upon the ceremonies of an acknowledged hea- 
then temple, but upon the Christianized heathenism 
of Rome. 

" The above are the points of resemblance be- 
tween Bhoodism and Popery, which have struck my 
own mind the most powerfully. A pressure of en- 
gagements must be my apology for the brief, and I 
fear imperfect manner in which I have endeavored 
to comply with your request. Wishing you abun- 
dant success in your efforts to advance the interests 
of Bible truth and genuine Protestantism, 
"I remain 

" Yours in gospel bonds, 

" EUGENIO KlNCAID." 



APPENDIX C— Page 109. 

TEMPORIZING POLICY OF THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES IN CHINA. 

In relation to this principle of accommodation, re- 
ferred to by Dr. Middleton, as adopted by the Jesuits 
in their missions to the heathen, the following two 
extracts may not be unacceptable to the reader. 
The first is from a recent valuable little work on 
the Jesuits, by the Rev. R. W. Overbury, minister 
of Eagle-street Chapel, London. The second from 
an able article in the Christian Review for June, 
1841, on " The Jesuits as a Missionary Order/' 
from the pen of one of the profoundest scholars and 
most eloquent writers of the present day. 

" The Jesuits," says Mr. Overbury, " at a very 
early period established missions in the Celestial 
Empire. It was whilst projecting this mission that 
Francis Xavier fell ill and died. In reply to those 
who represented to him the difficulties of the under- 
taking, he had said : ' I am chosen for so high an 
enterprise by the special favor of heaven. * * * 
The die is cast, I wish to go to China, and nothing 
can change my design. Were all hell let loose, I 
would scorn it, provided heaven were favorable to 
me.' At this time, however, some untoward events 
took place, which threw him into a fewer, of which 
he died in fifteen days, in the forty-sixth year of his 



APPENDIX C. 185 

age, having spent the last ten years in his Indian 
expedition. 

" What Xavier thus vainly designed, was attempt- 
ed by other hands. To give ever so brief a sketch 
of the Jesuit missions in China, would occupy too 
much time. The following letter, however, from 
the Roman Catholic Bishop Palafox to Pope Inno- 
cent X., dated January 8th, 1649, may be relied on 
as giving a just representation of the proceedings of 
the Jesuits in that country. < The whole church/ 
says he, ' publicly laments that it has been rather 
seduced than edified in China, by what the Jesuits 
have taught respecting the faith. They have kept 
the cross out of sights and authorized customs abso- 
lutely Pagan. Instead of Christianizing idolaters, 
they have heathenized Christians ; they have united 
God and Belial at the same table, in the same tem- 
ple, at the same altar, and in the same sacrifices. 
In fact, idols are worshipped in that nation under 
the mask of Christianity, or rather the purity of our 
holy faith is polluted under the mask of idolatry. 
They have not only permitted the new converts to 
frequent the temples where idols are adored, but to 
take part in the abominable sacrifices which are of- 
fered to them ; nay, they themselves offer sacrifices 
to the idols, prostrate themselves before them, pre- 
sent incense to them, and erect the cross on the 
same temple as Dagon, — such rites being evaded 
by a pretext of the Jesuits, directing the inward at- 
tention of the worshipper to a cross which is carried 
in secret, at the same time that their exterior wor- 
ship is offered to the idol.' No ecclesiastical order 
ever deviated so widely from the principles of the 
Christian religion. Instead of teaching the new 
converts, as they ought, the new converts have in- 
16* 



186 APPENDIX C. 

veigled their teachers into idolatry, and have in- 
duced them to embrace a worship and customs that 
are detestable ; so that the fish has not been taken 
by the angler, but the angler has been caught by 
the fish. ' As I am nearer to this people,' (the Chi- 
nese,) says the Bishop, ' than any other prelate ; as 
I have not only received letters from their instruct- 
ors, but am acquainted with all the facts of the case, 
and am in possession of all the documents that have 
appeared upon it, and as in the character of bishop, 
God has called me to the government of his church, 
I should have cause to tremble at the awful day of 
judgment, if having his spiritual sheep committed 
to my care, I had not represented to your highness 
how many scandals are occasioned by this doctrine 
of the Jesuits in places where the true faith alone 
should be propagated.' " * 

" Another remarkable feature in the Jesuit order, 
illustrated in the history of all their missions," says 
the writer in the Christian Review, " was their fa- 
tal principle of accommodation, — one in the use of 
which they alternately triumphed and fell. The 
gospel is to be presented with no needless offence 
given to the prejudices and habits of the heathen, 
but the gospel itself is never to be mutilated or dis- 
guised ; nor is the ministry ever to stoop to compli- 
ances in themselves sinful. The Jesuit mistook or 
forgot this. From a very early period, the order 
were famed for the art with which they studied to 
accommodate themselves and their religion to the 
tastes of the nation they would evangelize. Ricci, 
on entering China, found the bonzes, the priests of 

* The Jesuits, by R. W. Overbury, page 135, &c. London : 
Houlston & Stoneman. 1846. 



APPENDIX C. 187 

the nation ; and to secure respect, himself and his 
associates adopted the habits and dress of the bon- 
zes. But a short acquaintance with the empire 
taught him, that the whole class of the priesthood 
was in China a despised one, and that he had been 
only attracting gratuitous odium in assuming their 
garb. He therefore relinquished it again, to take 
that of the men of letters. In India, some of their 
number adopted the Braminical dress, and others 
conformed to the disgusting habits of the Fakeer and 
the Yogee, the hermits and penitents of the Moham- 
medan and Hindoo superstition. Swartz met a 
Catholic missionary, arrayed in the style of the Pa- 
gan priests, wearing their yellow robe, and having 
like them a drum beaten before him. It would 
seem, upon such principles of action, as if their next 
step ought to have been the creation of a Christian 
Juggernaut ; or to have arranged the Christian sut- 
tee, where the widow might burn according to the 
forms of the Romish breviary ; or to have organized 
a band of Romanist Thugs, strangling in the name 
of the Virgin, as did their Hindoo brethren for the 
honor of Kalee. 

" In South America, one of the zealous Jesuit fath- 
ers, finding that the Payernes, as the sorcerers and 
priests of the tribe were called, were accustomed to 
dance and sing in giving their religious instructions, 
put his preachments into metre, arm copied the move- 
ments of these Pagan priests, that he might win the 
savage by the forms to which he had been accus- 
tomed. In China, again, they found the worship of 
deceased ancestors generally prevailing. Failing 
to supplant the practice, they proceeded to legitimate 
it. They even allowed worship to be paid to Con- 
fucius, the atheistical philosopher of China, provided 



188 APPENDIX C. 

their converts would, in offering the worship, con- 
ceal upon the altar a crucifix to which their homage 
should he secretly directed. Finding the adoration 
of a crucified Saviour unpopular among that self- 
sufficient people, they are accused by their own Ro- 
manist brethren of having suppressed in their teach- 
ings the mystery of the cross, and preached Christ 
glorified, but not Christ in his humiliation, his agony, 
and his death. A more arrogant act than this the 
wisdom of this world has seldom perpetrated, when 
it has undertaken to modify and adorn the gospel of 
the crucified Nazarene. 

"But to Robert de Nobilibus, the nephew of Bel- 
larmine, and the near kinsman of one of the pontiffs, 
a man of distinguished talent and zeal, laboring in 
India, it was reserved to exhibit one of the worst 
instances of this fatal spirit. Finding the Bramins 
in possession of the spiritual power, he published 
abroad that the Bramins of Rome were the kindred, 
but the seniors and the superiors of those of India. 
Enmity may have charged him falsely, in declaring 
that he forged deeds, in which a direct descent was 
claimed for these Western Bramins from Brama 
himself, the chief god of Hindoo idolatry ; but it is 
certain, that in this or some other mode he made 
the new faith so popular, that twelve, or as some 
accounts state, seventy of the Indian Bramins be- 
came his coadjutors ; and after his death, with the 
collusion of the Portuguese priests, the new sect 
went on still triumphing. But even the Romish see 
repudiated such conversions as these ; and a bull 
from the Vatican extinguished the next communion. 
To this same able but treacherous laborer belongs 
the fame of another kindred achievement. He com- 
posed in the language of the country a treatise in 



APPENDIX C. 189 

favor of Christianity. The work had the title of 
the Ezour Vedam. It was intended to sap the skep- 
ticism of the East ; but so covertly, though with 
much ability, did it undertake the task, that having 
been translated and reaching France, where it fell 
into the hands of Voltaire, he pounced upon it as an 
ancient Braminical treatise, full of oriental wisdom, 
and proving that Christianity had borrowed its chief 
doctrines from Eastern sources. Thus, while labor- 
ing to destroy unbelief in India, he became in the 
next century instrumental in aiding its progress in 
Europe. The Jesuit, caught in his own snare, was 
made from his grave to lend weapons to the scoffer ; 
while the arch-mocker, the patriarch of French in- 
fidelity, entangled in the toils of that wilful credu- 
lity which has distinguished so many eminent unbe- 
lievers, quoted the work of modern Jesuitism as an 
undoubted monument of ancient Braminism. Thus 
are the wise taken in their own craftiness, when in 
their self-confidence they undertake either to pa- 
tronize or to impugn the gospel of the Nazarene. 

"We need scarcely to name another defect of the 
Jesuit missions, which must have occurred to all. 
Their fatal neglect of the Scriptures. Even Xavier 
translated into Japanese but the creed, the Lord's 
Prayer, and a brief catechism, and afterwards a Life 
of the Saviour, compiled from the gospels. The 
Lives of the Saints afterwards appeared in that lan- 
guage. In the tongue of China the Jesuits acquired 
such proficiency as to become voluminous authors, 
writing, it is said, hundreds of books ; but although 
they translated the ponderous Sum of Theology of 
Thomas Aquinas into Chinese, the Scriptures seem 
to have been thought a needless or dangerous book, 
and a compend of the gospel history was, we believe, 



190 APPENDIX C. 

their chief work in the form of scriptural translation. 
With no religious light but that emanating from the 
altar and pulpit, their churches were, when persecu- 
tion veiled these, left in thick darkness. The Je- 
suits, anxious to shut up their converts into a safe 
and orthodox submission, seem to have preferred 
this fearful risk, to the peril of leaving the lively or- 
acles to beam forth their living brightness upon the 
minds of their people. Hence the Catholics, linger- 
ing still in the Celestial Empire, and their Indian 
neophytes in Paraguay and California, have proba- 
bly never known, scarce even by name, those Scrip- 
tures which are the rightful heritage of every Chris- 
tian. Nor, for their own use, even, did their mis- 
sionaries prize the Bible aright. Does the Jesuit 
father appear in the midst of a savage tribe to ha- 
rangue them on his religion ; or is he dragged by 
them a dauntless victim to the stake ; the one vol- 
ume that is seen suspended from his neck, is not the 
Bible, but his breviary. In all this, the Jesuit was 
but acting with other Romanists. That church has 
assumed the fearful responsibility of shutting out the 
sunlight of divine revelation ; undertaking in its 
stead to supply the reflected light, the moonbeams 
of tradition, — a gentler brightness, under which no 
eye will be dazzled, by which no mind will be quick- 
ened into too rapid a vegetation, — a dubious gloom, 
favorable alike to wonder, to fear, to slumber, and 
to fraud. But as the sun will shine, so the Scrip- 
tures live on. They who preach the truth, but give 
not the Bible, withhold from their own teachings the 
most authoritative sanction. Those, on the contrary, 
whose doctrine is a doctrine of falsehood, contraven- 
ing and superseding the Scriptures, must yet one 
day meet that light they would have obscured, and 



APPENDIX C. 191 

find themselves and all their doings tried by the 
standard they would have fain displaced." * 

The temporizing policy of the Jesuits in prosecu- 
ting their missions in China, could not escape the 
notice of the opponents of that crafty and powerful 
order; and accordingly, we find that about the com- 
mencement of the eighteenth century, the question 
arose in the Romish church whether this amalga- 
mation of heathenism with Christianity was a lawful 
method of multiplying converts. This was decided 
by Pope Clement XL, in the year 1704, against the 
Jesuits, and the Chinese converts were forbidden by 
a solemn edict any longer to practise the idolatrous 
rites of their nation in connection with their pro- 
fessed Christian worship. This edict, however, so 
displeased the Jesuit missionaries, that the same 
Pope, dreading the consequences of exasperating so 
powerful an order, deemed it politic to issue another 
edict a few years later, which in effect nullified the 
provisions of the former. This latter decree, which 
was dated in 1715, allowed the heathen ceremonies 
referred to, upon condition that they should be re- 
garded, not as religious but civil institutions ; a dis- 
tinction which might serve to satisfy the conscience 
of the Pope in thus authorizing the ceremonies of 
heathenism, but would have not the slightest effect 
on the feelings of the Chinese devotee in mingling 
in the same act of devotion, the worship of Confucius 
and of Christ. 

* Christian Review, Vol. VI., page 184, &c. 



APPENDIX D.— Page 121. 

SPRINKLING OF HORSES AT ROME. 

This absurd ceremony is regularly observed at 
Rome on St. Anthony's day, the 17th of January. 
On that day the inhabitants of the city of Rome and 
vicinity send their horses, &c, decked with ribands, 
to the convent of St. Anthony, which is situated near 
the church of St. Mary the Great. A Roman Cath- 
olic priest in his sacerdotal garments, stands at the 
church door, with a large sprinkling-brush in his 
hand, and as each animal is presented to him, he 
takes off his skull-cap, mutters a few words, in La- 
tin, intimating that through the merits of the blessed 
St. Anthony, they are to be preserved for the com- 
ing year from sickness and death, famine and dan- 
ger, then dips his brush in a huge bucket of holy 
water, that stands by him, and sprinkles them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost. 

Sometimes the visitor at Rome will see a splendid 
equipage drive up, attended by outriders, in elegant 
livery, to have the horses thus sprinkled with holy 
water, all the people remaining uncovered till the 
absurd and disgusting ceremony is over. On one 
occasion a traveller observed a countryman, whose 



APPENDIX D. 193 

beast having received the holy water, set off from 
the church door at a gallop, but had scarcely gone 
a hundred yards before the ungainly animal tumbled 
down with him, and over its head he rolled into the 
dust. He soon, however, arose, and so did the horse, 
without either seeming to have sustained much in- 
jury. The priest looked on, and though his bless- 
ing had failed, he was not out of countenance ; 
while some of the by-standers said that but for it, 
the horse and his rider might have broken their 
necks. 

A recent eye-witness of this ceremony, writes as 
follows : " If I could lead my readers, on the 17th of 
January, to the church of St. Antoin in Rome, I am 
convinced they would not know whether they should 
laugh at the ridiculous religious performances, or 
weep over the heathenish practices of the church of 
Rome. He would see a priest in his sacerdotal gar- 
ments, with a stole over his neck, a brush in his 
right hand, and sprinkling the mules, asses, and 
horses with holy water, and praying for them and 
with them, and blessing them in order to be pre- 
served the whole year from sickness and death, fam- 
ine and danger, for the sake and merits of the holy 
Antony. All this is a grotesque scene, so grotesque 
that no American can have any idea of it, and hea- 
then priests would never have thought of it. Add 
to that, the great mass of people, the kickings of the 
mules, the meetings of the lovers, the neighings of 

17 



194 APPENDIX D. 

the horses, the melodious voices of the asses, the 
shoutings of the multitude, and mockings of the pro- 
testants, who reside in Rome, and you have a spec- 
tacle, which would be new, entirely new, not only 
for American protestants, but for the heathen them- 
selves, and must be abominable in the eye of God. 
But enough ; the subject is too serious ; it is a re- 
ligious exercise, practised by the priests of Rome, in 
the so-called metropolis of the Christian world, sanc- 
tioned by the self-styled infallible head of the church 
of Rome. All we can say is : ' Ichabod, thy glory 
is departed.' The priests of heathen Rome would 
be ashamed of such a religious display in the nine- 
teenth century."* 

* Papal Rome as it Is, page 52. 



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